The Anthropology of Food and Body explores the way that making, eating, and thinking about food reveal culturally determined gender-power relations in diverse societies. This book brings feminist and anthropological theories to bear on these provocative issues and will interest anyone investigating the relationship between food, the body, and cultural notions of gender.

Carole M. Counihan is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at Millersville University. She is co-editor of Food and Culture (Routledge, 1997), and of Food and Gender: Identity and Power (1998).

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Food, Culture and Gender 2. Bread as World: Food Habits and Social Relations in Modernizing Sardinia 3. Food, Power, and Female Identity in Contemporary France 4. Food, Sex, and Reproduction: Penetration of Gender Boundaries 5. What Does It Mean to Be Fat, Thin, and Female? A Review Essay 6. An Anthropological View of Western Women's Prodigious Fasting: A Review Essay 7. Food Rules in the United States: Individualism, Control, and Hierarchy 8. Fantasy Food: Gender and Food Symbolism in Preschool Children's Made-Up Stories 9. Food as Tie and Rupture: Negotiating Intimacy and Autonomy in the Florentine Family 10. The Body as Voice of Desire and Connection in Florence, Italy 11. Body and Power in Women's Experiences of Reproduction in the United States Notes Bibliography Recipes Index