Dangerous digestion : the politics of American dietary advice / E. Melanie DuPuis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DuPuis, E. Melanie (Erna Melanie), 1957- author.

Series:

California studies in food and culture ; 58.

California Studies in Food and Culture ; 58

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food habits--United States--History.

Food habits.

Diet--Political aspects--United States.

Diet.

Diet--Social aspects--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (231 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Throughout American history, ingestion (eating) has functioned as a metaphor for interpreting and imagining this society and its political systems. Discussions of American freedom itself are pervaded with ingestive metaphors of choice (what to put in) and control (what to keep out). From the country's founders to the abolitionists to the social activists of today, those seeking to form and reform American society have cast their social-change goals in ingestive terms of choice and control. But they have realized their metaphors in concrete terms as well, purveying specific advice to the public about what to eat or not. These conversations about "social change as eating" reflect American ideals of freedom, purity, and virtue. Drawing on social and political history as well as the history of science and popular culture, Dangerous Digestion examines how American ideas about dietary reform mirror broader thinking about social reform. Inspired by new scientific studies of the human body as a metabiome-a collaboration of species rather than an isolated, intact, protected, and bounded individual-E. Melanie DuPuis invokes a new metaphor-digestion-to reimagine the American body politic, opening social transformations to ideas of mixing, fermentation, and collaboration. In doing so, the author explores how social activists can rethink politics as inclusive processes that involve the inherently risky mixing of cultures, standpoints, and ideas.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

1. Free and Orderly Bodies

2. Diet and the Romance of Reform

3. Gut Wars: GILDED AGE STRUGGLES AGAINST PURITY

4. Pure Food and the Progressive Body

5. Good Food, Bad Romance

6. The Trouble with Purity

7. Ferment: AN ECOLOGY OF THE BODY

8. Toward a Fermentive Politics

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN FOOD AND CULTURE

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520962132

0520962133

OCLC:

928892298