Food, Festival and Religion


Book Description

Food, Festival and Religion explores how communities in northern Italy find a restorative sense of place through foodways, costuming and other forms of materiality. Festivals examined by the author vary geographically from the northern rural corners of Italy to the fashionable heart of urban Milan. The origins of these lived religious events range from Christian to vernacular Italian witchcraft and contemporary Paganism, which is rapidly growing in Italy. Francesca Ciancimino Howell demonstrates that during ritualized occasions the sacred is located within the mundane. She argues that communal feasting, pilgrimage, rituals and costumed events can represent forms of lived religious materiality. Building on the work of scholars including Foucault, Grimes and Ingold, Howell offers a theoretical “Scale of Engagement” which further tests the interfaces between and among the materialities of place, food, ritual and festivals and provides a widely-applicable model for analyzing grassroots events and community initiatives. Through extensive ethnographic research and fieldwork data, this book demonstrates that popular Italian festivals can be ritualized, liminal spaces, contributing greatly to the fields of religious, performance and ritual studies.




Sacred Consumption


Book Description

Making a foundational contribution to Mesoamerican studies, this book explores Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptures, as well as indigenous and colonial Spanish texts, to offer the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Morán asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence—or, in some cases, the absence—of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Morán also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.




Food, Feasts, and Faith [2 volumes]


Book Description

An indispensable resource for exploring food and faith, this two-volume set offers information on food-related religious beliefs, customs, and practices from around the world. Why do Catholics eat fish on Fridays? Why are there retirement homes for aged cows in India? What culture holds ceremonies to welcome the first salmon? More than five billion people worldwide claim a religious identity that shapes the way they think about themselves, how they act, and what they eat. Food, Feasts, and Faith: An Encyclopedia of Food Culture in World Religions explores how the food we eat every day often serves purposes other than to keep us healthy and stay alive: we eat to express our faith and to adhere to ethnic or cultural traditions that are part of who we are. This book provides readers with an understanding of the rich world of food and faith. It contains more than 200 alphabetically arranged entries that describe the beliefs and customs of well-established major world religions and sects as well as those of smaller faith communities and new religious movements. The entries cover topics such as religious food rules, religious festivals and symbolic foods, and vegetarianism and veganism, as well as general themes such as rites of passage, social justice, hospitality, and compassion. Each entry on religion explains what the religious dietary laws and guidelines are and how these were interpreted and put into practice historically and in modern settings. The coverage also includes important festivals and feast days as well as significant religious figures and organizations. Additionally, some 160 sidebars provide examples and more detailed information as well as fun facts.




The Archaeology of Food


Book Description

Surveys the archaeology of food: its methods and its themes (economics, politics, status, identity, gender, ethnicity, ritual, religion).




Food and Nutrition


Book Description

This popular text has been completely revised and updated in full colour to provide comprehensive coverage of the new GCSE syllabuses in Home Economics. Revision questions are included throughout the book, with structured questions and tasks.




Examining Food and Nutrition


Book Description

This text has been written to meet the requirements of the revised GCSE Home Economics: Food and Nutrition syllabuses, and introduces students to details of legislation concerning food and nutrition.




Urban Religious Events


Book Description

How might we best understand the relationship between the vibrant religious landscapes we see in many cities and contemporary urban social processes? Through case studies drawn from around the world, contributors explore the ways in which these processes interact in cities. This book argues that religious events – including rituals, processions, and festivals – are not only choreographies of sacred traditions, but they are also creative disruptions that reveal how urban cultural hierarchies are experienced and contested. Exposing the power dynamics behind these events, this book shows how performative uses of urban space serve to destabilize dominant genealogies and lineages around urban identities just as they lay claims to cultural supremacy or heritage. Through exploring the affective disruptions and political controversies caused by religious events, the contributors engage theoretical discussions in urban studies, the sociology of religion and the ethnography of ritual. This book is a significant contribution to understanding emerging patterns in contemporary religion and also for theories related to heritagization, eventization, and urbanization.




Encyclopedia of Global Religion


Book Description

Presents entries A to L of a two-volume encyclopedia discussing religion around the globe, including biographies, concepts and theories, places, social issues, movements, texts, and traditions.




Food and Nutrition Throughout Life


Book Description

Nutritional requirements vary greatly according to age and lifestyle. This evidence-based, comprehensive text is a complete guide to eating habits across age and population groups. It provides the recommendations for intakes of nutrients and foods, and diet to achieve optimum health. Chapters systematically examine the nutritional issues for individuals from preconception, pregnancy and breastfeeding through to adulthood and old age. The text features an overview of dietary patterns by age group based on national scientific survey data together with the latest recommendations for optimum nutrition to maintain well-being and address specific health concerns. The final section examines nutrition issues for specific populations including indigenous groups, athletes and the disadvantaged. Throughout the text, key points are illustrated by case studies and the reader's knowledge is tested via quizzes and study questions. With chapters from leading nutrition researchers and educators in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, this is an excellent introduction to nutrition through the lifespan. 'A comprehensive overview and detailed discussion of food and nutrition topics for all ages and stages of life.' - Robynne Snell, Curtin University




The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America


Book Description

Home cooks and gourmets, chefs and restaurateurs, epicures, and simple food lovers of all stripes will delight in this smorgasbord of the history and culture of food and drink. Professor of Culinary History Andrew Smith and nearly 200 authors bring together in 770 entries the scholarship on wide-ranging topics from airline and funeral food to fad diets and fast food; drinks like lemonade, Kool-Aid, and Tang; foodstuffs like Jell-O, Twinkies, and Spam; and Dagwood, hoagie, and Sloppy Joe sandwiches.