Exploring the Ethical Limitations and Potential of Aesthetic Experiences of Food and Eating in Vegetarian Cookbooks

Author: Smith, Robyn

Source: Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, Volume 11, Number 4, December 2008 , pp. 419-448(30)

Publisher: Berg Publishers

Key:

- Free Content

- New Content

- Subscribed Content

- Free Trial Content

Abstract:

This article considers the possibility for an aesthetics approach to food and eating as both a way to fashion ethics and a way to understand culinary aspects of society. I consider the possibilities for a critical ethics within dietary aesthetic practices through an interpretive investigation of vegetarian cookbooks. For this work I examined two books each from the English and Anglo-American vegetarian movement (1879 and 1904) and the Anglo-American vegetarian movement of the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that, although all the cookbooks under consideration here contain aesthetic practices of food and eating, there are profound ethical differences and distances between them. I argue further that some practices, rather than others, are ethically useful and important insofar as they allow sensual experiences "corresponding to change" (Massumi 1987: xvi).

Keywords: AESTHETICS; ETHICS; VEGETARIANISM; COOKBOOKS

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2752/175174408X389111

The full text electronic article is available for purchase. You will be able to download the full text electronic article after payment.

$32.99 plus tax Refund Policy