Food and Gender

Food and Gender: Making the Modern World places food and gender at the center of the human experience and through this creates a new periodization for modern world history. In focusing on food and gender, and the connections between them, the books shows that a shift in the markers of modernity is needed, away from the traditional perspectives organizing this history that emphasize war, political states, and the global economy which often exclude and marginalize women and trivialize the study of foodways.

Instead, it places emphasis on the changes in household organization, female labor, family, the informal sector, personal technology, urban literacy and education, enfranchisement, sexuality, and childrearing/cultural/social reproduction as among the most powerful forces at the heart of modern history. It then recovers a narrative that considers feminist perspectives and traces the impact of masculinities, while fully integrating women, both aiming to restore female agency to the “food in world history” narrative. Chapters trace themes that focus on the embodied history of foodways, including the role of accumulation, exchange, power, revolution, conflict, migration, technology, and difference. Together these thematic explorations show how contemporary patterns of abundance and scarcity have been created. The relationships between gender and food also serve as markers of cultural, racial, social, national, and sexual identities and thus reflect the differences and disparities that have shaped our history.

This book explores the major themes of world history: the environment, cultural developments and interactions, governance, economic systems, social interactions and organization, ideas and power, and technology and innovation, but puts women, gender, and foodways at its center.