User:Alice/Grad reading

Main research topics

Reading on food

Article: Caring about food: doing gender in the foodie kitchen - Kate Cairns, Josee Johnston, Shyon Baumann

While I really dislike the usage of the term 'foodie' to refer to people who, like me, have a deep and personal interest in food, I regardless found this article to be quite helpful in outlining some points I would also like to make in my research. The article is based on a series of interviews with people of both genders whose lives revolve around food practices, without being involved directly in the food industry. The article tries to identify patterns of gender stereotypes being enforced in people's relationship with food, or as they call it 'doing gender'. Feminist literature on this topic has shown that 'social and cultural meanings attached to food serve to perpetuate unequal gender relations'. Traditionally, women have been disproportionately assigned food (unpaid) domestic labour, mostly associated with women's roles as care givers within the heteronormative family.

doing gender = 'a woman conducts herself as recognizably womanly' (Feeding the family, Marjorie DeVault (1991, 118) 
/// accountability, gender is accomplished through situated enactments that are accountable to the prevailing gender order (west and zimmermann, 1987, 135).

Even though women are mostly in charge of the preparation of food, their ability to take pleasure out of food is heavily restricted by societal pressure on maintaining a certain figure, restrains on expressing pleasure, etc. By contrast, men's involvement with food has always been seen mostly as a hobby, or a display of skill, often outdoors and for entertainment (even in TV, women are mostly portrayed in domestic settings, while many men cook outdoors). The interviewed people seemed to 'reinscribe particular understandings about gendered food practices' while negotiating 'cultural norms mandating gender equality'. The article also make clear the fact that class plays a crucial role when talking about 'foodie' culture, although they do not provide a cross-class representation. Privilege allows for people to invest time, money and energy into engaging with food at a superior level, other than subsistence: 'selective food consumption is enabled by class privilege'.

Other ideas that come up:

• cooking as investment in family health and care has very rarely been mentioned by any of the men interviewed, while the women had it as a central point
• cooking as obligation vs cooking as hobby, gendered
• emphasis on knowledge and skill to articulate their food identities (men), with role models (men), also heroic stories of exotic meats and ingredients

In conclusion, this article identifies instances in which gender stereotypes become clear in people who are highly interested in food culture, in three different aspects of it: pleasure, care work and knowledge. To be noted that the study took place in 2008 in the US across various states, with almost 50/50 gender distribution (slightly more women), 30 respondents of various ages.

Article: Cooking up lives: Feminist food memoirs - Arlene Avakian

Rather than being super informative regarding my research per se, this article has given me some insights into the genre of feminist food memoirs, of which I am certain I will be reading more soon. The memoirs referenced in this article are:

• The Language of Baklava: A Memoir - Diana Abu-Jaber, NY: Pantheon Books, 2005
• A day of Honey: A Momoir of Food, Love and War - Annia Ciezaldo, NY: Free Press, 2011
• Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America: A food Memoir - Linda Furiya, Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006
• Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen - Judith Newton, Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2013