ABSTRACT

Food is everywhere in contemporary mediascapes, as witnessed by the increase in cookbooks, food magazines, television cookery shows, online blogs, recipes, news items and social media posts about food. This mediatization of food means that the media often interplays between food consumption and everyday practices, between private and political matters and between individuals, groups, and societies.

This volume argues that contemporary food studies need to pay more attention to the significance of media in relation to how we 'do' food. Understanding food media is particularly central to the diverse contemporary social and cultural practices of food where media use plays an increasingly important but also differentiated and differentiating role in both large-scale decisions and most people's everyday practices.

The contributions in this book offer critical studies of food media discourses and of media users' interpretations, negotiations and uses that construct places and spaces as well as possible identities and everyday practices of sameness or otherness that might form new, or renew old food politics.

chapter 1|17 pages

Introduction

part I|107 pages

Food practices in the media

chapter 2|17 pages

Good fare and welfare

Perceptions of American and French food in postwar cookbooks

chapter 3|24 pages

Transcultural food and recipes for immigration

Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill

chapter 4|16 pages

Just a happy housewife?

Michelle Obama, food activism and (African-)American womanhood

chapter 5|17 pages

‘The worst mum in Britain'

Class, gender and caring in the campaigning culinary documentary

chapter 6|15 pages

Manning the table

Masculinity and weight loss in U.S. commercials

part II|75 pages

Practices of food and media

chapter 8|20 pages

‘I (never) just google’

Food and media practices

chapter 9|20 pages

Everyday mothering and the media food ‘soup'

Comparing contested food and mothering across genres in two different social contexts

chapter 10|16 pages

Food across media

Popular food contents among children in Germany 1

chapter 11|12 pages

Children cooking media food

Exploring media (food) literacy through experimental methods

chapter 12|5 pages

Epilogue

Politics and the future of food and media