"studying the most banal of human activities can yield crucial information and insights about both daily life and world view, from what is in the pot to the significance of the fire that heats it" (1).
Expanding Interest
Women's Studies—1970s & beyond
Establishing Interest
Fernand Braudel
Claude Levi-Strauss
Mary Douglas
Levi-Strauss
patterns as humans move toward cultural—languages, cooking
"raw" associated with natural and "cooked" associated with cultural
Douglas
looks at Leviticus & Deuteronomy to interpret ways tribal societies maintained separateness and reinforced group identity
Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (1988)
Carole Counihan
Aida Kanafani-Zahar
Bread & the Sacred
Marjorie DeVault
food preparation as family-defining work
women's activities in the home not divided into "work versus leisure" (9)
Work as work done only outside the home
does not address race and ethnicity
Colonialism
Political Economy
Globalization
Barndt — Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain (1999)
explores exploitation & resistance of women food works in North and South (12)
writes that the "food system...deepens inequalities between North and South as well as between men and women (with class and race complicating the picture); at the same time, it perpetuates human domination of the environment"
Maquilization v. McDonaldization
Shiva (1992)
liberate developing countries rather than saving
colonialism and development imposed patriarchy
"removing land, water, and forests from their management and control, as well as through the ecological destruction of soil, water and vegetation systems so that nature's productivity and renewability were impaired"