Food and the Self: Consumption, Production and Material Culture (Materializing Culture)

Solier, Isabelle de

ISBN 10: 0857854216 / ISBN 13: 9780857854216

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2013

About this Item

Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M0857854216Z3

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Food and the Self: Consumption, Production and Material Culture (Materializing Culture)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857854216
• ISBN 13: 9780857854216
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

We often hear that selves are no longer formed through producing material things at work, but by consuming them in leisure, leading to 'meaningless' modern lives. This important book reveals the cultural shift to be more complex, demonstrating how people in postindustrial societies strive to form meaningful and moral selves through both the consumption and production of material culture in leisure.

Focusing on the material culture of food, the book explores these theoretical questions through an ethnography of those individuals for whom food is central to their self: 'foodies'. It examines what foodies do, and why they do it, through an in-depth study of their lived experiences. The book uncovers how food offers a means of shaping the self not as a consumer but as an amateur who engages in both the production and consumption of material culture and adopts a professional approach which reveals the new moralities of productive leisure in self-formation. The chapters examine a variety of practices, from fine dining and shopping to cooking and blogging, and include rare data on how people use media such as cookbooks, food television, and digital food media in their everyday life.

This book is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the meaning of food in modern life.

About the Authors

Isabelle de Solier is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Victoria University, Australia. She has published on food in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Continuum, and the edited collection Exposing Lifestyle Television, and is the editor of Food Cultures, a special issue of Cultural Studies Review.

Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology, University College London. Recent books include 'A Theory of Shopping', 'The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach' (with Don Slater) and Ed. 'Car Cultures'.

Paul Gilroy is a historian, writer and cultural theorist and the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at UCL (2019). Prior to UCL, he taught at South Bank University, Essex University, Goldsmiths, University of London, Yale University, London School of Economics and King's College London. Gilroy is the 2019 winner of the Holberg Prize. He is known for his influential studies on black cultural expression on both sides of the Atlantic; the cultural history of postcolonial societies; and the sociology of ethnicity, race and racism in Britain.