Book Review: Upsetting Food: Three Eras of Food Protests in the United States

Abstract

work. And openly rejects power/inequality focused understandings of the topics at hand, indicating that these standpoints are overused and do not capture the full picture of all the things going on in any given cultural space. This is a compelling argument by the author. However, he commits the same offense that he accuses the power/inequality lens of. By rejecting more critical standpoints and advancing a constructivist argument, the book limits itself and does not capture the full breath of how taste operates and how cultural scenes develop. We know from decades of research that culture can be deployed in ways that divide people and cultural products, spaces and scenes are used in ways that bolster the interests of those in power and disadvantage oppressed groups (take for example the connection between craft beer and gentrification). Although it is slowly changing, the craft beer scene in many (if not most) cities and areas in the US is not diverse at all. Craft beer tends to draw in a white more affluent consumer. But this important detail goes overlooked in this book and at times rejected. For example, on page 68 the author dismisses Elijah Andersen’s work which conceptualizes the craft beer scene in Philadelphia as a “white space” and offers evidence against this by reflecting on his observations at a brewery, which according to him, had a diverse mix of racial groups, ethnicities and genders. This overlook falls short of capturing the complexities of the scene. But on the other hand, the book does offer a convincing account of how people’s interactions around cultural products are central within scenes.