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Eating in Theory

by Annemarie Mol

Duke University Press, 2021
Paper: 978-1-4780-1141-5 | Cloth: 978-1-4780-1037-1 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-1292-4
Library of Congress Classification TX357.M653 2021

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK
As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our eating, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment. In Eating in Theory Annemarie Mol takes inspiration from these transformative entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. Drawing on fieldwork at food conferences, research labs, health care facilities, restaurants, and her own kitchen table, Mol reassesses the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. They celebrated the allegedly unique capability of humans to rise above their immediate bodily needs. Mol, by contrast, appreciates that as humans we share our fleshy substance with other living beings, whom we cultivate, cut into pieces, transport, prepare, and incorporate—and to whom we leave our excesses. This has far-reaching philosophical consequences. Taking human eating seriously suggests a reappraisal of being as transformative, knowing as entangling, doing as dispersed, and relating as a matter of inescapable dependence.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Annemarie Mol is Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the University of Amsterdam and the author of The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, also published by Duke University Press, and The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice.

REVIEWS

“Its writing limpid, its organization elegant, its argument scintillating, this book is inspirational. And radical. Annemarie Mol effectively unseats the mindset that cannot see past people as thinking and embodied beings. While her address is to questions as they are posed in philosophy, this book will find huge sympathy among those dealing with anthropological materials of all kinds and stages a striking provocation for the general reader who asks whether scholarship can tell us anything new.”

-- Marilyn Strathern, author of Relations: An Anthropological Account

“In characteristically crisp and inviting prose, Annemarie Mol thinks through eating—its social acts, sensory experiences, and metabolic processes—to re-metabolize the wisdoms so many of us have absorbed about knowing and relating, being and doing, subjectivity and agency. Eating in Theory offers a nourishingly pluralistic vision of humans permeable to their surroundings, interdependent rather than autonomous, and hungry for further thinking. It’s a book to savor.”

-- Heather Paxson, Professor of Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Eating in Theory is a tasty and satisfying treat for anyone interested in human-nature relationships, refreshing theoretical perspectives, food studies, ethnography and more."

-- Ola Plonska LSE Review of Books

"[I]n detailing much of her critical reflection on a certain valued practice of thinking over those of eating, Mol eloquently brings into the limelight the vitality of abandoning grand theories aimed at explaining all human beings, and especially those not situated in their own theorization."

-- Elin Linder Anthropology Book Forum

"A remarkable book. . . . By dispensing with the ontological need for knowledge to be universal, Eating in Theory lives up to its title and truly theorizes eating as an act of meaning and meaning making. . . . Mol’s analysis unfolds fluidly and clearly. . . . Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."

-- M. A. Lange Choice

"I know of no health researcher who so compellingly takes health out of individual bodies and situates it in the collective ecology that bodies depend on. . . . No writings seem more relevant to the crises of the present moment."

-- Arthur W. Frank Journal of Medical Humanities

"[A] terrific little book. . . . . Anthropologists and sociologists with an interest in Food Studies can easily make strong use of Eating in Theory, as well as of course philosophers of many disciplines preoccupied with the question of what we can wrap our collective Western mouth—rather than our head—around the most pernicious theoretical effects of the Anthropocene."

-- Megan Volpert Popmatters

"I find this book a valuable philosophical and theoretical contribution to our understanding of eating and food. I find it especially useful because Annemarie Mol demonstrates, through her scrutiny of such philosophical categories as Being, Knowing, Doing, and Relating, the multiple entanglements between people, between humans and nonhumans, that highlight the complexities of eating. As she successfully demonstrates, this traditionally banalized act can be productive for thinking about what it means to be human at a time when multiple empirical realities challenge universal philosophical understandings."

-- Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz Journal of Anthropological Research

"Eating in Theory proves to be not only brief and approachable, but exciting and thought-provoking for foodways scholars. Reminiscent of Sarah Pink’s work on sensory ethnography, Mol introduces the reader to exciting new approaches in studying food and eating. Through thoughtful fieldwork passages and engaging analysis, Mol teaches us to view the world through eating, relating it to larger issues of overconsumption and ecological sustainability."

-- Ema Noëlla Kibirkstis Digest

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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