The “Food Studies 101” reading group aims to provide an accessible entry point into the field of Critical Food Studies through the lens of taste. We will discuss the work of Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu (among others) to investigate the development of “taste” as an alimentary experience, affective register, and cultural metaphor. In doing so, we will further work our way towards considering the role that food plays in the structuring of individual experience, collective society and narrative formation. Are we truly what we eat? And if we are, what does that mean for how we understand ourselves, and one another? This reading group will be of interest to anyone working on food, taste, commensality, and social hierarchisation; or for those seeking to gain more insight into the field of food studies as a whole.
Primary texts:
Barthes, Roland, ‘Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption’, in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 3rd edn (Routledge, 2013), pp. 23–30
Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste’, in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, trans. by Richard Nice, 3rd edn (Routledge, 2013), pp. 31–39
Secondary texts:
Appadurai, Arjun, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30.1 (1988), pp. 3–24
Johnston, Josée, and Sarah Cappeliez, ‘You Are What You Eat: Enjoying (and Transforming) Food Culture’, in Critical Perspectives in Food Studies, ed. by Mustafa V. Koç, Jennifer Sumner, and Anthony Winson, 3rd edn (Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 18–31
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, ‘The Culinary Triangle’, in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 3rd edn (Routledge, 2013), pp. 40–47
