Cooking is Good to Think
Published online on March 19, 2013
Abstract
The three books under review here represent the recent efflorescence of diverse approaches to a previously neglected topic: the anthropology of cooking. By examining cooking through the lens of biological anthropology and differing cultural anthropological approaches, the books together make a strong case for the centrality of in-depth analysis of cooking to issues of gender, and to social change and evolutionary change. As Lévi-Strauss long ago recognized, this review reaffirms the notion that cooking is "good to think" about many of the topics that preoccupy our contemporary academic studies.