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How food expresses and shapes American values

"The author makes a very persuasive and entertaining case. The charm and interest of the book remain in its diverse facts". -- Choice

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CHOICE Review

Introduces the study of "foodways" in American culture, which has recently emerged as a subspecialty of the discipline of folklore in the US. The basic rationale for this line of research is the classic argument for symbolic analysis: food communicates deep cultural meanings and is one subsystem of practices, stories, and beliefs that profoundly stands for a larger whole, in this case that of American culture. The author does indeed make a very persuasive and entertaining case for food(ways) as a topical perspective through which the incredible diversity of American society can be comprehensively and systematically grasped. Foodways become, thus, a crucial medium for demonstrating, not the unity of American culture, but its diversity. Characteristic of American folklore studies, this account is relatively untheorized. Rather, it is presented more as a compendium of cultural facts, guided by such rough-and-ready chapter headings as "Foodways and American Folklife (Tall Tales, Legends, Recipes)"; "The Food Event," "From Field to Table," and "Marking Time: a Helix of Culture." This last chapter is the volume's most sustained effort to relate food practices to patterns of community life. In sum, this book exhibits both the naivete and the richness of folklore research. There is very little cultural or social history here, or interest in issues of cultural critique such as problems of authority and co-modification--concerns central to contemporary cultural studies. The charm and interest of the book remain in the diverse facts it musters. General readers. -G. E. Marcus, Rice University