White bread bio-politics: purity, health, and the triumph of industrial baking

Author:

Bobrow-Strain Aaron1

Affiliation:

1. Politics Department, Whitman College

Abstract

This article traces the massive commodification and industrialization of the USA's single most important food: bread. It argues that bakers overcame serious obstacles to capitalist development during this period thanks to the construction of contingent and contested associations between industrial bread and larger discourses of purity, hygiene, and progress circulating through turn-of-the-century America. It explores two arenas in which this articulation operated: the re-making of baking as a techno-science of expert control and the visual spectacle of streamlined, white loaves. This story, in turn, offers larger lessons about the contradictory politics of food safety in our own time. Building on Michel Foucault's work on bio-politics, it shows how notions of food safety dependent on discourses of purity, contagion, hygiene, and vitality inevitably constitute lines of exclusion and social hierarchy, even as they are used to mobilize `progressive' social change.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Environmental Science (miscellaneous),Cultural Studies,Geography, Planning and Development

Cited by 37 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Vanguard Visions of Vertical Farming: Envisaging and Contesting an Emerging Food Production System;Science, Technology, & Human Values;2024-04-04

2. Health Apps, Genetic Diets, and Superfoods;CONTEMP FOOD STUD;2023

3. Cereal species mixtures: an ancient practice with potential for climate resilience. A review;Agronomy for Sustainable Development;2022-10

4. References;Staple Security;2022-08-08

5. Notes;Staple Security;2022-08-08

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3