Food Television and Otherness in the Age of Globalization examines the growing popularity of food and travel television and its implications for how we understand the relationship between food, place, and identity. Attending to programs such as Bizarre Foods, Bizarre Foods America, The Pioneer Woman, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Man vs. Food, and No Reservations, Casey Ryan Kelly critically examines the emerging rhetoric of culinary television, attending to how American audiences are invited to understand the cultural and economic significance of global foodways. This book shows how food television exoticizes foreign cultures, erases global poverty, and contributes to myths of American exceptionalism. It takes television seriously as a site for the reproduction of cultural and economic mythology where representations of food and consumption become the commonsense of cultural difference and economic success.

Working across food studies and media studies, Joanne Hollows examines the impact of celebrity chefs on how we think about food and how we cook, shop and eat. Hollows explores how celebrity chefs emerged in both restaurant and media industries, making chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay into global stars. She also shows how blogs and YouTube enabled the emergence of new types of branded food personalities such as Deliciously Ella and BOSH! As well as providing a valuable introduction to existing research on celebrity chefs, Hollows uses case studies to analyse how celebrity chefs shape food practices and wider social, political and cultural trends. Hollows explores their impact on ideas about veganism, healthy eating and the Covid-19 pandemic and how their advice is bound up with class, gender and race. She also demonstrates how celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Nadiya Hussain and Jack Monroe have become food activists and campaigners who intervene in contemporary debates about the environment, food poverty and nation.

This book examines the historical development of Korean food TV and its articulation of Koreanness in the era of globalization. Jaehyeon Jeong defines the evolution of Korean food TV as an outcome of the conjuncture between the television industry’s structural changes, the shift in food’s landscape and cultural legitimacy, and various sociocultural, political, and economic transformations. In addition, Jeong reveals how the state appropriates the banality of food to raise South Korea’s global image and how it utilizes domestic television to disseminate statist discourse of the nation. Understanding discourses of national cuisine as reflective of and formative of discourses of the nation, he argues that the growth of discourses of national cuisine is symptomatic of the struggle for nationness in a globalized world.

An in-depth investigation of the complex relationships among food, culture, and society, Communicating Food in Korea features contributors from a variety of disciplines, including economics, political science, communication studies, nutrition research, tourism research, and more. Each chapter presents a unique interpretation of food’s economic, political, and sociocultural relevance. Situated in Korea’s shifting historical contexts, contributors explore themes, such as colonialism, food symbolism, gastronationalism, multiculturalism, food tourism, food security, and food sovereignty to research the ways food intersects with social issues in Korean society.

When the Television Food Network launched in 1993, its programming was conceived as educational: it would teach people how to cook well, with side trips into the economics of food and healthy living. Today, however, the network is primarily known for splashy celebrity chefs and spirited competition shows. These new essays explore how the Food Network came to be known for consistently providing comforting programming that offers an escape from reality, where the storyline is just as important as the food that is being created. It dissects some of the biggest personalities that emerged from the Food Network itself, such as Guy Fieri, and offers a critical examination of a variety of chefs' feminisms and the complicated nature of success. Some writers posit that the Food Network is creating an engaging, important dialogue about modes of instruction and education, and others analyze how the Food Network presents locality and place through the sharing of food culture with the viewing public. This book will bring together these threads as it explores the rise, development, and unique adaptability of the Food Network.

Media interest in food has intensified in recent years, leading to a contemporary food landscape where ‘alternative’ food practices are increasingly visible. Concerns that were once exclusively the domain of activist movements motivated by environmental, animal rights, health and anti-corporate agendas are now central to primetime television cooking shows, mobile apps and social media. This book is the first to explore the impact of popular media and culture on contemporary food politics. Through examination of a range of media and cultural texts, including news, digital media, advertising and food labelling, it brings together leading and emerging scholars in food studies, media and communications, sociology, law, policy studies, business, and geography. The book explores the practices of alternative food movements, the marketing techniques of conventional and alternative food producers, and the relationships between food industries, media, and the public. Covering topics ranging from agtech start-ups and social justice projects, to new ways of mediating food waste, celebrity, and ‘ethical’ foods, Alternative Food Politics reveals the importance of media as a driver of food system transformation. This is a pivotal time for media and food industries, and this book is essential reading for scholars and students seeking to better understand the futures, possibilities and limits of food politics today.

Americans of the 1960s would have trouble navigating the grocery aisles and restaurant menus of today. Once-exotic ingredients—like mangoes, hot sauces, kale, kimchi, and coconut milk—have become standard in the contemporary American diet. Laresh Jayasanker explains how food choices have expanded since the 1960s: immigrants have created demand for produce and other foods from their homelands; grocers and food processors have sought to market new foods; and transportation improvements have enabled food companies to bring those foods from afar. Yet, even as choices within stores have exploded, supermarket chains have consolidated. Throughout the food industry, fewer companies manage production and distribution, controlling what American consumers can access. Mining a wealth of menus, cookbooks, trade publications, interviews, and company records, Jayasanker explores Americans’ changing eating habits to shed light on the impact of immigration and globalization on American culture.

This unique book considers COVID-19 as one pandemic amongst many, forming an episodic era of ebbing and flowing crises: the Virocene. Investigating COVID-19 in the context of the phenomenology of the crisis, it offers critical exploration of key theses in the study of mobility and futures, travel and citizenship. Through thought-provoking and insightful analysis Rodanthi Tzanelli suggests that COVID-19, and any highly infectious virus that follows, evolves into the new self-governing principle of various forms of movement, acting as an ontological magnet: as mobilities become reshaped by remote technologies, the very order of reality changes.