Full Description
Food is both a material system of nourishment, necessary for human survival, and a communicative system that signifies multiple meanings across human cultures. This book explores the cultural politics of food in the South African context, bringing together a range of disciplinary perspectives on the links between media, nourishment, and inequality. The chapters all highlight the multiplicity of meanings that food has in South African society. These include historical perspectives on the impact of colonialism, migration and apartheid had on food and foodways in South Africa; sociological interventions on food and society; aesthetic practices in relation to food; and mediated food cultures in South Africa. Taken together, the book critically explores the multiple ways in which food is never just food, and always linked to complex and shifting modalities of meaning and knowledge in the South African context.
Contents
Introduction: Never just food: An introduction to nourishment, inequality and media in South Africa
Sarah Gibson and Mehita Iqani
Part I: Historical and social perspectives
1 Towards a decolonised food system in South Africa: Lessons from Indigenous food systems
Brittany Kesselman
2 The women's claim to uMqombothi from the Durban System
Russel Hlongwane and Tammy Langtry
3 'A square meal': Food systems, security and anxiety in Southern and Central Africa through the eyes, and mouths, of missionaries, 1880-1910
Amy Rommelspacher
4 The right to eat: How black migrants in South Africa accessed food during the COVID-19 pandemic
mpho ndaba
5 Grounded, together, loved: Food and community in the temporary micro-utopia of Afrika Burn
Mehita Iqani
Part II: Aesthetic and media practices
6 Gardens of simple delights: Consuming food, consuming pleasure
Rebecca Pointer and Darlene Miller
7 Eating well: Culinary capital and the South African high-foodie scene
Wamuwi Mbao
8 Recipes for the rainbow nation: Community and commensality in the 7de Laan televisual fan cookbooks
Sarah Gibson
9 You are what you feed: Lunchbox spectaculars in middle class South Africa
Maya Loon
10 Never just Father's Day: Food, masculinities, and fatherhood in South African advertising
Carla Tsampiras
11 The cultural politics of veganism on South African Instagram
Tanja Bosch and Liani Maasdorp
Index
