The three books under review here represent the recent efflorescence of diverse approaches to a previously neglected topic: the anthropology of cooking. By examining cooking through the lens of biological anthropology and differing cultural anthropological approaches, the books together make a strong case for the centrality of in-depth analysis of cooking to issues of gender, and to social change and evolutionary change. As Lévi-Strauss long ago recognized, this review reaffirms the notion that cooking is "good to think" about many of the topics that preoccupy our contemporary academic studies.
AdaponJ (2008) Culinary Art and Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.
2.
De CerteauM (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. TomisackTJ.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
3.
De CerteauMGiardLMayolP (1998) The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 2: Living and Cooking, trans. TomasikTJ.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
4.
DuS (2003) Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs: Gender Unity and Gender Equality among the Lahu of Southwest China. New York: Columbia University Press.
5.
EndicottKEndicottK (2008) The Headman was a Woman: The Gender Egalitarian Batek of Malaysia. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
6.
GraeberD (2011) Debt: The First 5,000 Years. New York: Melville House Publishing.
7.
RosaldoM (1974) Woman, culture and society: A theoretical overview. In: MZRosaldoLLamphere (eds) Woman, Culture and Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 17–44.
8.
TuckerR (ed.) (1972) The Marx–Engels Reader. New York: Norton.
9.
WardlowH (2006) Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
10.
WranghamRPetersonD (1996) Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. New York: Houghton-Mifflin.
11.
YanagisakoSDelaneyC (1995) Introduction. In: SYanagisakoCDelaney (eds) Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1–19.
