LIFE | of the mind
Food, Glorious Food Communicating about ourselves and our society through what we eat
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by Carlnita P. Greene
ood is everywhere. Over the course of the last ten years, there has been a virtual explosion of food-related popular culture. Everything from the rise in popularity of food TV to a publishing landslide of cookbooks, biographies, and cultural histories—even the emergence of culinary tourism as a new way of traveling—all point to a rediscovery of food as more than something we need merely to survive, but also as something that acts as a crucial element in our shared understanding of the world. As a communication professor, generally I focus on the ways that we create meanings about the world in which we live and how we share those meanings with other people within media and popular culture. A key way that we communicate with others today is through our interactions with food. It is often at the epicenter of human relationships, ranging from our most intimate to our most public encounters. It operates as a means of creating and expressing our identities to others. And it intersects with a whole host of social, cultural, economic, and political issues. For these very reasons, I have been drawn to the study of food because it is a form of communication that pervades almost every aspect of our lives.
26 CONNECTIONS | Winter 2011-12
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Dr. Carlnita Greene recently co-edited the book Food as Communication/Communication as Food (Peter Lang, 2011).
www.naz.edu