Review: States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan, by José Ciro Martinez

Abstract

Book Review| August 01 2023 Review: States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan, by José Ciro Martinez States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan, José Ciro Martinez, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022, 368 pp. $90.00 (hardcover); $30.00 (paper); (eBook) Katharina Graf Katharina Graf Goethe University Frankfurt kg38@soas.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar kg38@soas.ac.uk Gastronomica (2023) 23 (3): 92–93. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2023.23.3.92 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Katharina Graf; Review: States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan, by José Ciro Martinez. Gastronomica 1 August 2023; 23 (3): 92–93. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2023.23.3.92 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search I have long waited for this kind of book, an embodied political economy of a staple food such as bread, and how it literally—rather than just symbolically—sustains a nation. Martinez’s evocative ethnography of bread and political stability in Jordan is a prime example of how minute attention to everyday food practices can yield deep analytical insights into the workings of a state. Its publication coincides with another recent book on bread in the region, Jessica Barnes’s Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (2022). A political scientist himself and largely addressing comparative political sciences, Martinez makes good use of his long-term ethnographic fieldwork with bakers and inspectors in Amman, the capital city of Jordan, to explore how the state is performed through and by the everyday practices that sustain the national bread subsidy system. Martinez’s theoretical framework centers on Judith Butler’s notion of performativity and is greatly enhanced... You do not currently have access to this content.