Suchergebnisse

The contributors to Eating beside Ourselves examine eating as a site of transfer and transformation that create thresholds for human and nonhuman relations.

In Greece, women speak of mothering as "within the nature" of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. In this setting, how do women think of themselves as proper individuals, mothers, and Greek citizens? In this anthropological study of reproductive politics and ethics in Athens, Greece, Heather Paxson tracks the effects of increasing consumerism and imported biomedical family planning methods, showing how women's "nature" is being transformed to meet crosscutti

ABSTRACT Terroir, the taste of place, is being adapted by artisan cheesemakers in the United States to reveal the range of values—agrarian, environmental, social, and gastronomic—that they believe constitute their cheese and distinguish artisan from commodity production. Some see themselves as reverse engineering terroir cheeses to create place though environmental stewardship and rural economic revitalization. But a tension is produced: while warranting projects of reterritorialization through defetishized food production, terroir marketing may risk turning the concept of "terroir" into a commodity fetish. U.S. terroir talk reveals attempts to reconcile the economic and sociomoral values that producers invest in artisan cheese.

Artisanal cheeses have captured the taste buds of many Americans over the last 20 years, especially in dairy states where it can be found in local specialty shops & farmers' markets, but also in Slow Food-approved supermarkets such as Whole Foods. This chapter explores the production & marketing of specialty cheeses in Vermont. It is argued by many that this recent evolution represents the profit-driven creation of an elite niche market for America's most distinguished cheeses. Slick brochures describe such cheeses as Vermont Shepherd, with its "smooth & creamy texture," "rich & earthy flavor," & "hints of clover, wild mint, & thyme," its quality enhanced by the grasses of the natural fields where the sheep graze -- marketing phrases designed to make the customer drool while forking over $20 for a pound of this epicurean delight. However, the author contends that the production of such cheeses is not just market-driven. The cheese artisans want to make the best of the best & take pride in what they do. The husband-&-wife makers of Vermont Shepherd traveled to France, where the Basques taught them the secrets of making the best sheep's milk cheese. It is concluded that the "social relations of small-scale agriculture & food production in the US are driven by sentiment, affiliation, & politics as well as by economic rationality.". References. J. Stanton

Greece's declining birthrate is said to constitute a problem of national survival. The state tries to minimize the impact that demographic weakening will have on the well-being of the nation by downplaying the diaspora & encouraging women at home to produce more babies. Responsibility for the demographic situation has been placed on women, their attitudes toward mothering, & their use of abortion. Maternal pensions have been forwarded by the state as family & population policy &, as excerpts from interviews show, criticized by Athenian women as a means of professionalizing motherhood & perpetuating a limited vision of female adulthood. 44 References. Adapted from the source document.

Microbial life has been much in the news. From outbreaks of Escherichia coli to discussions of the benefits of raw and fermented foods to recent reports of life forms capable of living in extreme environments, the modest microbe has become a figure for thinking through the presents and possible futures of nature, writ large as well as small. Noting that dominant representations of microbial life have shifted from an idiom of peril to one of promise, we argue that microbes – especially when thriving as microbial communities – are being upheld as model ecosystems in a prescriptive sense, as tokens of how organisms and human ecological relations with them could, should, or might be. We do so in reference to two case studies: the regulatory politics of artisanal cheese and the speculative research of astrobiology. To think of and with microbial communities as model ecosystems offers a corrective to the scientific determinisms we detect in some recent calls to attend to the materiality of scientific objects.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- stacy leigh pigg and vincanne adams Introduction: The Moral Object of Sex -- stacy leigh pigg Globalizing the Facts of Life -- Part 1 The Production of New Subjectivities -- Moral Science and the Management of ''Sexual Revolution'' in Russia -- Family Planning, Human Nature, and the Ethical Subject of Sex in Urban Greece -- From Auntie to Disco: The Bifurcation of Risk and Pleasure in Sex Education in Uganda -- Part 2 The Creation of Normativities as a Biopolitical Project -- Sexuality, the State, and the Runaway Wives of Highlands Papua, Indonesia -- ''Ordinary'' Sex, Prostitutes, and Middle-Class Wives: Liberalization and National Identity -- Moral Orgasm and Productive Sex: Tantrism Faces Fertility Control in Lhasa, Tibet (China -- Part 3 Contestations of Liberal Humanism Forged in Sexual Identity Politics -- Uses and Pleasures: Sexual Modernity, hiv/aids, and Confessional Technologies in a West African Metropolis -- The Kothi Wars: aids Cosmopolitanism and the Morality of Classification -- References -- Contributors -- Index

In this fresh, literate, and biting critique of current thinking on some of today's most important and controversial topics, leading anthropologists take on some of America's top pundits. This absorbing collection of essays subjects such popular commentators as Thomas Friedman, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kaplan, and Dinesh D'Souza to cold, hard scrutiny and finds that their writing is often misleadingly simplistic, culturally ill-informed, and politically dangerous. Mixing critical reflection with insights from their own fieldwork, twelve distinguished anthropologists respond by offering fresh perspectives on globalization, ethnic violence, social justice, and the biological roots of behavior. They take on such topics as the collapse of Yugoslavia, the consumer practices of the American poor, American foreign policy in the Balkans, and contemporary debates over race, welfare, and violence against women. In the clear, vigorous prose of the pundits themselves, these contributors reveal the hollowness of what often passes as prevailing wisdom and passionately demonstrate the need for a humanistically complex and democratic understanding of the contemporary world.Available: November 2004Pub Date: January 2005

An Anthropogenic Table of Elements provides a contemporary rethinking of Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of elements, bringing together "elemental" stories to reflect on everyday life in the Anthropocene. Concise and engaging, this book provides stories of scale, toxicity, and temporality that extrapolate on ideas surrounding ethics, politics, and materiality that are fundamental to this contemporary moment. Examining elemental objects and forces, including carbon, mould, cheese, ice, and viruses, the contributors question what elemental forms are still waiting to emerge and what political possibilities of justice and environmental reparation they might usher into the world. Bringing together anthropologists, historians, and media studies scholars, this book tests a range of possible ways to tabulate and narrate the elemental as a way to bring into view fresh discussion on material constitutions and, thereby, new ethical stances, responsibilities, and power relations. In doing so, An Anthropogenic Table of Elements demonstrates through elementality that even the smallest and humblest stories are capable of powerful effects and vast journeys across time and space