Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz – författare

The state of Yucatán has its own distinct culinary tradition, and local people are constantly thinking and talking about food. They use it as a vehicle for social relations but also to distinguish themselves from “Mexicans.” This book examines the politics surrounding regional cuisine, as the author argues that Yucatecan gastronomy has been created and promoted in an effort to affirm the identity of a regional people and to oppose the hegemonic force of central Mexican cultural icons and forms. In particular, Yucatecan gastronomy counters the homogenizing drive of a national cuisine based on dominant central Mexican appetencies and defies the image of Mexican national cuisine as rooted in indigenous traditions. Drawing on post-structural and postcolonial theory, the author proposes that Yucatecan gastronomy - having successfully gained a reputation as distinct and distant from ‘Mexican’ cuisine - is a bifurcation from regional culinary practices. However, the author warns, this leads to a double, paradoxical situation that divides the nation: while a national cuisine attempts to silence regional cultural diversity, the fissures in the project of a homogeneous regional identity are revealed.

This book examines the history, archaeology, and anthropology of Mexican taste. Contributors analyze how the contemporary identity of Mexican food has been created and formed through concepts of taste, and how this national identity is adapted and moulded through change and migration.wing on case studies with a focus on Mexico, but also including Israel and the United States, the contributors examine how local and national identities, the global market of gastronomic tourism, and historic transformations in trade, production, the kitchen space and appliances shape the taste of Mexican food and drink.Chapters include an exploration of the popularity of Mexican beer in the United States by Jeffrey M. Pilcher, an examination of the experience of eating chapulines in Oaxaca by Paulette Schuster and Jeffrey H. Cohen, an investigation into transformations of contemporary Yucatecan gastronomy by Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz, and an afterword from Richard Wilk. Together, the contributors demonstrate how taste itself is shaped through a history of social and cultural practices.

The Cultural Politics of Food, Taste, and Identity examines the social, cultural, and political processes that shape the experience of taste. The book positions flavor as involving all the senses, and describes the multiple ways in which taste becomes tied to local, translocal, glocal, and cosmopolitan politics of identity. Global case studies are included from Japan, China, India, Belize, Chile, Guatemala, the United States, France, Italy, Poland and Spain. Chapters examine local responses to industrialized food and the heritage industry, and look at how professional culinary practice has become foundational for local identities. The book also discusses the unfolding construction of “local taste” in the context of sociocultural developments, and addresses how cultural political divides are created between meat consumption and vegetarianism, innovation and tradition, heritage and social class, popular food and authenticity, and street and restaurant food. In addition, contributors discuss how different food products—such as kimchi, quinoa, and Soylent—have entered the international market of industrial and heritage foods, connecting different places and shaping taste and political identities.

This book examines the history, archaeology, and anthropology of Mexican taste. Contributors analyze how the contemporary identity of Mexican food has been created and formed through concepts of taste, and how this national identity is adapted and moulded through change and migration.wing on case studies with a focus on Mexico, but also including Israel and the United States, the contributors examine how local and national identities, the global market of gastronomic tourism, and historic transformations in trade, production, the kitchen space and appliances shape the taste of Mexican food and drink.Chapters include an exploration of the popularity of Mexican beer in the United States by Jeffrey M. Pilcher, an examination of the experience of eating chapulines in Oaxaca by Paulette Schuster and Jeffrey H. Cohen, an investigation into transformations of contemporary Yucatecan gastronomy by Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz, and an afterword from Richard Wilk. Together, the contributors demonstrate how taste itself is shaped through a history of social and cultural practices.

The Cultural Politics of Food, Taste, and Identity examines the social, cultural, and political processes that shape the experience of taste. The book positions flavor as involving all the senses, and describes the multiple ways in which taste becomes tied to local, translocal, glocal, and cosmopolitan politics of identity. Global case studies are included from Japan, China, India, Belize, Chile, Guatemala, the United States, France, Italy, Poland and Spain. Chapters examine local responses to industrialized food and the heritage industry, and look at how professional culinary practice has become foundational for local identities. The book also discusses the unfolding construction of “local taste” in the context of sociocultural developments, and addresses how cultural political divides are created between meat consumption and vegetarianism, innovation and tradition, heritage and social class, popular food and authenticity, and street and restaurant food. In addition, contributors discuss how different food products—such as kimchi, quinoa, and Soylent—have entered the international market of industrial and heritage foods, connecting different places and shaping taste and political identities.

New scientific discoveries, technologies and techniques often find their way into the space and equipment of domestic and professional kitchens. Using approaches based on anthropology, archaeology and history, Cooking Technology reveals the impact these and the associated broader socio-cultural, political and economic changes have on everyday culinary practices, explaining why people transform – or, indeed, refuse to change – their kitchens and food habits.Focusing on Mexico and Latin America, the authors look at poor, rural households as well as the kitchens of the well-to-do and professional chefs. Topics range from state subsidies for traditional ingredients, to the promotion of fusion foods, and the meaning of kitchens and cooking in different localities, as a result of people taking their cooking technologies and ingredients with them to recreate their kitchens abroad. What emerges is an image of Latin American kitchens as places where ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ culinary values are constantly being renegotiated.The thirteen chapters feature case studies of areas in Mexico, the American-Mexican border, Cuba, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. With contributions from an international range of leading experts, Cooking Technology fills an important gap in the literature and provides an excellent introduction to the topic for students and researchers working in food studies, anthropology, history, and Latin American studies.