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Cooking is Good to Think

Body & Society

Published online on

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.