The gastrodynamics of displacement: Place-making and gustatory identity in the immigrants' Midwest

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 323-348

  Oyangen, Knut ^a  

^a BI NORWEGIAN BUSINESS SCHOOL   (Norway)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449258454     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/jinh.2009.39.3.323     Document Type: Review

References (128)

1. Georg Simmel (trans. Michael Symons), "The Sociology of the Meal [1910]," Food and Foodways, V (1994), 345-350;
2. Claude Fischler, "Food, Self, and Identity," Social Science Information. XXVII (1988), 275-292.
3. Simone Cinotto, "Leonardo Covello, the Covello Papers, and the History of Eating Habits among Italian Immigrants in New York," Journal of American History, XCI (2004), 497-521;
4. Tracy Poe, "The Labour and Leisure of Food Production as a Mode of Ethnic Identity Building among Italians in Chicago, 1890-1940," Rethinking History, V (2001), 131-148;
5. Euridice Charon Cordona, "Re-Encountering Cuban Tastes in Australia," Australian Journal of Anthropology, XV (2004), 40-53;
6. Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge, Mass., 2001);
7. M. S. A. Rao, "Conservatism and Change in Food Habits among the Migrants in India: A Study in Gastrodynamics," in R. S. Khare and idem (eds.), Food, Society, and Culture: Aspects in South Asian Food Systems (Durham, 1986), 121-140;
8. Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell, "Introduction," in idem (eds.), Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity (Knoxville, 1984), 3-15;
9. Susan Kalcik, "Ethnic Foodways in America: Symbol and the Performance of Identity," in ibid., 37-65;
10. Mary Douglas, In the Active Voice (Boston, 1982), 100-101;
11. Eugene N. Anderson, Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture (New York, 2005) ;
12. Krishnendu Ray, The Migrant's Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households (Philadelphia, 2004);
13. Jitsuichi Masuoka, "Changing Food Habits of the Japanese in Hawaii," American Sociological Review, X (1945), 759-765.
14. Harvey Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York, 1988);
15. idem, Paradox of Plenty: The Social History of Eating in Modem America (New York, 1993);
16. Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, Mass., 1998);
17. Diner, Hungering for America.
18. Millie Rahn, "Laying a Place at the Table: Creating Public Foodways Models from Scratch," Journal of American Folklore, CXIX (2006), 33;
19. Paul Rozin, "Sociocultural Influences on Human Food Selection," in Elizabeth D. Capaldi (ed.), Why We Eat What We Eat: The Psychology of Eating (Washington, D. C., 1996), 235;
20. Khare and Rao, "Introduction," in idem (eds.), Food, Society, and Culture, 6;
21. Roland Barthes, "Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption [1961]," in Elborg Forster and Robert Forster (eds.), European Diet from Pre-Industrial to Modem Times (New York, 1975), 50;
22. Fischler, "Food, Self, and Identity," 275-277.
23. Capaldi, "Introduction," in idem (ed.), Why We Eat What We Eat, 3-9; idem, "Conditioned Food Preferences," in ibid., 53-80;
24. L. L. Birch and J. A. Fisher, "The Role of Experience in the Development of Children's Eating Behavior," in ibid., 130;
25. Rozin, "Sociocultural Influences on Human Food Selection," 233-263;
26. Bennett G. Galef, Jr., "Social Influences on Food Preference and Feeding Behaviors of Vertebrates," in Capaldi (ed.), Why We Eat What We Eat, 207-231;
27. Bernard Lyman, A Psychology of Food: More than a Matter of Taste (New York, 1989);
28. Alexandra W. Logue, The Psychology of Eating and Drinking: An Introduction (New York, 1991; orig. pub. 1986).
29. Lyman, Psychology of Food, 24;
30. J. A. Mennella and G. K. Beauchamp, "The Early Development of Human Flavor Preferences," in Capaldi (ed.), Why We Eat What We Eat, 103-104;
31. Birch and Fisher, "Role of Experience," 131, Rozin, "Sociocultural Influences," 237;
32. Logue, Psychology of Eating and Drinking, 98-111;
33. Fischler, "Food, Self, and Identity," 277-278;
34. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, vii, 4;
35. Mark McWilliams, "Distant Tables: Food and the Novel in Early America," Early American Literature, XXXVIII (2003), 365-366;
36. Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil, Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society (New York, 1997), 51-52;
37. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 19-20.
38. See also Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York, 1985), 1-5.
39. Simmel, "Sociology of the Meal."
40. Claude Levi-Strauss (trans. J. Weightman and D. Weightman), The Raw and the Cooked (New York, 1967; orig. pub 1964), 10;
41. idem (trans. Weightman and Weightman), From Honey to Ashes (New York, 1973; orig. pub. 1966);
42. idem (trans. Weightman and Weightman), The Origin of Table Manners (New York, 1978; orig. pub. 1968);
43. idem (trans. C. Jacobsen and B. G. Schoepf), Structural Anthropology (New York, 1963; orig. pub. 1958), 34.
44. Levi-Strauss, "The Culinary Triangle," in Carole Counihan and Panny Van Esterik (eds.), Food and Culture: A Reader (New York, 1997), 28;
45. idem, The Raw and the Cooked, 164;
46. idem, Origins of Table Manners, 478-495.
47. For a critique of Levi-Strauss, see Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (New York, 1982), 17-29.
48. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 179-201.
49. The term gastrodynamics was introduced by Rao in "Conservatism and Change," more than likely influenced by the use of the term gastropolitics in Arjun Appadurai, " Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia," American Ethnologist, VIII (1981), 494-511.
50. Purnima Mankekar, '"India Shopping': Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging," in James L. Watson and Melissa Caldwell (eds.), The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating (Maiden, Mass., 2005), 203.
51. Fischler, "Food, Self, and Identity," 275. See also Anna Meigs, "Food as Cultural Construction," in Counihan and Van Esterik (eds.), Food and Culture, 103.
52. Masuoka, "Changing Food Habits"; Ray, Migrant's Table, 1-2, 78-91.
53. Ray, Migrant's Table, 131-135.
54. Cinotto, "Leonardo Covello"; Poe, "Labor and Leisure of Food Production." For the early twentieth-century professionals' attacks on immigrant cooking, table manners, food shopping, etc., see Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 103-106.
55. Diner, Hungering for America.
56. th Century. I. The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (Berkeley, 1992; orig. pub. 1979), 190-202;
57. Hans J. Teuterberg, "General Relationship between Diet and Industrialization," in Forster and Forster (eds.), European Diet from Pre-Industrial to Modern Times, 64-65;
58. idem, "The Diet as an Object of Historical Analysis in Germany," in idem (ed.), European Food History; A Research Review (New York, 1992), 109-128;
59. Mats Essemyr, "Nutritional Needs and Social Esteem: Two Aspects of Diet in Sweden during the 18 and 19 Centuries," in ibid., 256-277;
60. John E. Bodnar, The Transplanted; A History of Immigrants in America (Bloomington, 1985), 23-30.
61. Peter J. Smith, "Memories of the Life of Peter J. Smith," unpub. ms. (Eau Claire, Wisc. n. d.).
62. Interview with Peter Maretich, Ethnic History of Wisconsin Project, 4, 5, Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison.
63. Niels Hansen, letter to Hans Hansen, November 8, 1894, Niels Hansen papers [hereinafter NHP], Danish Immigrant Archives [hereinafter DIA], Grand View College, Des Moines, Iowa.
64. Letters from Niels to Hans Hansen, June 23, 1897; March 5, 1899; September 2, 1899; January 2, 1900, NHP. Øllebrød, beer bread, is rye bread boiled in wheat beer; like salted herring, it was typical poor man's fare in nineteenth-century Denmark.
65. Ibid., December 10, 1904.
66. The term gastro-anomie was coined by Fischler.
67. See Beardsworth and Keil, Sociology on the Menu, 66-67;
68. William A. McIntosh, Sociologies of Food and Nutrition (New York, 1966), 29;
69. Teuterberg, "General Relationship between Diet and Industrialization"; and Mennell, "Divergences and Convergences in the Development of Culinary Cultures," in Teuterberg (ed.), European Food History, 285. The wealthy in the United States had begun to abandon the "roast and cake" paradigm by this time. After 1880, they increasingly embraced fancy French cuisine, requiring skilled chefs whom the middle and lower classes could not afford to hire, thus creating some distance between the rich and others in food habits. Niels Hansen was presumably not aware of this trend. His concept of the "rich" probably derived mostly from his experiences in Denmark.
70. See Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 10-22. The distinction between food as medium and food in itself (as a message) is important, although this binary form conceals its complexity. If each mention of food in the sources is interpreted as a message about food, the importance of food as food will be overstated. Unfortunately, some works, including Diner's otherwise magnificent Hungering for America, may have gone too far in that direction. As the case of "roast and cake" shows, deciphering what people talk about when they mention food requires a great deal of attention to context.
71. Hjalmar Kjems, "Mit Liv," unpub. ms.( n.d.), DIA; Nils Olsen Haatvedt, letter to his father and siblngs, June 13, 1879, in Amerikabrev fra Norsk Utvandrermuseum, collection of America letters published online, http://www.nb.no/emigrasjon/brev-oversikt-forfatter.php. Gamalost, old cheese, is a pungent blue-mold cheese made from sour skim milk. Sureprim is a whey product also made from sour milk.
72. Douglas, "Deciphering a Meal," in Counihan and Van Esterik (eds.), Food and Culture, 36-54; Simmel, "Sociology of the Meal";
73. Khare, "The Indian Meal: Aspects of Cultural Economy and Food Use," in idem and Rao (eds.), Food, Society, and Culture, 159-183;
74. Douglas, In the Active Voice, 90-91;
75. Ray, Migrant's Table, 78-81;
76. Beardsworth and Keil, Sociology on the Menu, 83-84.
77. Niels Sorensen Rungborg, "Autobiography," unpub. ms. (n.d.), DIA, 154, 158, 159.
78. Meigs, "Food as a Cultural Construction"; Khare, "Indian Meal," 176; Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria, "Eating like an Indian: Social Relations in the Spanish Colonies," Current Anthropology, XLVI (2005), 551-573;
79. Rozin, "Sociocultural Influences," 235;
80. Williams, "Why Migrant Women Feed Their Husbands Tamales: Foodways as a Basis for a Revisionist View of Tejano Family Life," in Brown and Mussell (eds.), Ethnic and Regional Foodways, 113-126.;
81. Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class, 12-13;
82. Fischler, "Food, Self, and Identity"; Counihan and Van Esterik, "Introduction," in idem (eds.), Food and Culture, 1-7;
83. Douglas, "Deciphering a Meal," 42.
84. Christian Hansen, "Da jeg kom til Minnesota," unpub. ms. (Tyler, Minn., 1927), 10.
85. Johan Storm Munch, letter to Else Munch, July 16, 1857, in Helene Munch and Peter A. Munch (trans.), The Strange American Way: Letters of Caja Munch from Wiota, Wisconsin, 1855-1859 (Carbondale, 1970), 104.
86. Ibid.
87. Caja Munch, letter to Thalie Falch, January 18-20, 1858;
88. letter to Henriette and Caroline Munch, February 23-24, 1857, Munch and Munch (trans.), Strange American Way, 131, 78.
89. Ibid., letter to Mr. and Mrs. Falch, November, 25, 1855-February 15, 1856, 15-31.
90. Ibid., 22. As Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide through the American Status System (New York, 1983), 16, pointed out, the lower classes tend to define class in terms of wealth, the middle classes in tenus of education and occupation, and the upper classes in tenns of "taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior."
91. Caja Munch, letter to Mr. and Mrs. Falch, October 28, 1857;
92. November 25, 1855-February 15, 1856, Munch and Munch (trans.), Strange American Way, 128, 27.
93. Ibid., letter to Henriette and Caroline Munch, February 23-24, 1857, 34, 78. Bavarian in this context means commercially produced lager beer.
94. J. Jorgensen, "Danskerne i Turner County, South Dakota," unpub. ms. (n.d.), DIA, 4.
95. The previous studies of food behavior include Goode et al., "A Framework for the Analysis of Continuity and Change in Shared Sociocultural Rules for Food Use: The Italian-American Pattern," in Brown and Mussell (eds.), Ethnic and Regional Foodways, 67.
96. See also Poe, "Labor and Leisure of Food Production," 142;
97. Cordona, "Re-Encountering Cuban Tastes."
98. Ray, Migrant's Table, 73.
99. See also N. Manaan and B. J. Boucher, "The Bangladeshi Diaspora and Its Dietary Profile in East London, 1990-2000," in Anne J. Kershen (ed.), Food in the Migrant Experience (Burlington, Vt., 2002), 233;
100. Theodor van Dreveldt, letter to Franz von Weise, March 1848, in Kenneth Kronenberg (ed. and trans.), Lives and Letters of an Immigrant Family: The van Dreveldt's Experiences along the Missouri, 1844-1866 (Lincoln, 1998), 79.
101. Theodore Bost, letter to Ami and Jenny Bost, December 2, 1855, in Ralph H. Bowen (ed. and trans.), A Frontier Family in Minnesota: Letters of Theodore and Sophie Bost, 1851-1920 (Minneapolis, 1981), 72-73.
102. Ray, Migrant's Table, 74;
103. Bowen, Frontier Family, 130.
104. Johan Storm Munch, "Vita Mea," in Munch and Munch (trans.), Strange American Way, 167;
105. Sophie Bost, letter to Ami and Jenny Bost, April 10, 1862, in Bowen, Frontier Family, 204;
106. Theodore Bost, letter to Ami and Jenny Bost, August 1862, in ibid., 213;
107. Sophie Bost, letters to Ami and Jenny Bost, December 3, 1858; April 10, 1862;
108. April 26, 1862; to Elisee Bost, April 7, 1860, in ibid., 157, 158-160, 204-205, 208;
109. Theodore Bost, letter to Ami and Jenny Bost, August 1862, in ibid., 213.
110. John C. Abbott (ed.) (trans. Raymond Spahn), Journey to New Switzerland: Travel Account of the Koepfli and Suppiger Family to St. Louis on the Mississippi and the Founding of New Switzerland in the State of Illinois (Carbondale, 1987), 77-84.
111. Bernard Koepfli quoted by Salomon Koepfli in a letter to Kaspar Mauris Koepfli, December II, 1831, in Abbott, Journey to Nav Switzerland, 151, 142;
112. Joseph Suppiger, letter to Suppiger family, September 1832, ibid., 168;
113. Kaspar Koepfli, "Advantages and Disadvantages of the Area We Chose to Settle," ibid., 196 (italics in original).
114. John Becker, letter to Johannes Seibold, January 14, 1881, 3, Becker papers, Wisconsin Historical Society Archive, Madison;
115. Berta Kingestad, letter to Anna Bjøravåg, December 3, 1893, in Solveig Zempel (ed.), In Their Own Words: Letters from Norwegian Immigrants (Minneapolis, 1991), 53;
116. Anna Svensson Swanson (ed. Marjorie Carol and Lillian Evenson), Orphan, Immigrant, Prairie Pioneer: Memories of My Life (publisher unknown, 1989), 17.
117. Gertrude Braat Vandergon, Our Pioneer Days in Minnesota (Holland, Mich., 1949), 24:
118. Gro Svendsen, letter to her parents, November 20, 1862, in Theodore C. Blegen (ed.), Land of Their Choice: The Immigrants Write Home (Minneapolis, 1955), 393;
119. Mathilde Küner, letter to Veronika and Regina Kerler, March 23, 1850, in Louis F. Frank (ed.), Pionierjahre der Deutsch-Amerikanischer Familien Frank-Kerler in Wisconsin und Michigan, 1849-1864 (Milwaukee, 1911), 64;
120. Roger Welsch and Linda Welsch, Cather's Kitchen: Foodways in Literature and Life (Lincoln, 1987), 3.
121. Kjems, "Mit liv," 5;
122. Alfred Frost, "Autobiography," unpub. ms. (Withee, Wisc., 1981), 2;
123. Frederikke Johansen, Fredelund: Skildringer fra Nybyggertiden (Askov, Minn., n.d.), 40-41. Ableskiver, apple slices, are round pastries made in a special pan.
124. Mennell, All Manners of Food, I.
125. See, for example. Kittler and Suchler, Food and Culture in America, 6-9.
126. Mennella and Beauchamp, "Early Development of Human Flavor Preferences," 103-104;
127. Rozin, "Sociocultural Influences," 253-254.
128. Ray, Migrant's Table, 2.