The author uses four different facets of the social life of food--diet, cuisine, discourse, & practice--to draw a richly detailed & compelling portrait of one South American community.

Winner of the 2003 Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society. Cholas and Pishtacos are two provocative characters from South American popular culture—a sensual mixed-race woman and a horrifying white killerwho show up in everything from horror stories and dirty jokes to romantic novels and travel posters. In this elegantly written book, these two figures become vehicles for an exploration of race, sex, and violence that pulls the reader into the vivid landscapes and lively cities of the Andes. Weismantel's theory of race and sex begins not with individual identity but with three forms of social and economic interaction: estrangement, exchange, and accumulation. She maps the barriers that separate white and Indian, male and female-barriers that exist not in order to prevent exchange, but rather to exacerbate its inequality. Weismantel weaves together sources ranging from her own fieldwork and the words of potato sellers, hotel maids, and tourists to classic works by photographer Martin Chambi and novelist José María Arguedas. Cholas and Pishtacos is also an enjoyable and informative introduction to a relatively unknown region of the Americas.

There is widespread acknowledgement among anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnobotanists, as well as researchers in related disciplines that specific foods and cuisines are linked very strongly to the formation and maintenance of cultural identity and ethnicity. Strong associations of foodways with culture are particularly characteristic of South American Andean cultures. Food and drink convey complex social and cultural meanings that can provide insights into regional interactions, social complexity, cultural hybridization, and ethnogenesis. This edited volume presents novel and creative anthropological, archaeological, historical, and iconographic research on Andean food and culture from diverse temporal periods and spatial settings. The breadth and scope of the contributions provides original insights into a diversity of topics, such as the role of food in Andean political economies, the transformation of foodways and cuisines through time, and ancient iconographic representations of plants and animals that were used as food. Thus, this volume is distinguished from most of the published literature in that specific foods, cuisines, and culinary practices are the primary subject matter through which aspects of Andean culture are interpreted.

Women Redefining the Experience of Food Insecurity: Life Off the Edge of the Table is about understanding the relationship between food insecurity and women’s agency. The contributors explore both the structural constraints that limit what and how much people eat, and the myriad ways that women creatively and strategically re-structure their own fields of action in relation to food, demonstrating that the nature of food insecurity is multi-dimensional. The chapters portray how women develop strategies to make it possible to have food in the cupboard and on the table to be able to feed their families. Exploring these themes, this book offers a lens for thinking about the food system that incorporates women as agentive actors and links women’s everyday food-related activities with ideas about food justice, food sovereignty, and food citizenship. Taken together, the chapters provide a unique perspective on how we can think broadly about the issue of food insecurity in relation to gender, culture, inequality, poverty, and health disparity. By problematizing the mundane world of how women procure and prepare food in a context of scarcity, this book reveals dynamics, relationships and experiences that would otherwise go unremarked. Normally under the radar, these processes are embedded in power relations that demand analysis, and demonstrate strategic individual action that requires recognition. All of the chapters provide a counter to caricatured notions that the choices women make are irresponsible or ignorant, or that the lives of women from low-income, low-wealth communities are predicated on impotence and weakness. Yet, the authors do not romanticize women as uniformly resilient or consistently heroic. Instead, they explore the contradictions inherent in the ways that marginalized, seemingly powerless women ignore, resist, embrace and challenge hegemonic, patriarchal systems through their relationship with food.

Food, Power, and Resistance in the Andes is a dynamic, interdisciplinary study of how food's symbolic and pragmatic meanings influence access to power and the possibility of resistance in the Andes. In the Andes, cooking often provides Quechua women with a discursive space for achieving economic self-reliance, creative expression, and for maintaining socio-cultural identities and practices. This book explores the ways in which artistic representations of food and cooks often convey subversive meanings that resist attempts to locate indigenous Andeans-and Quechua women in particular-at the margins of power. In addition to providing an introduction to the meanings and symbolisms associated with various Andean foods, this book also includes the literary analysis of Andean poetry and prose, as well as several Quechua oral narratives collected and translated by the author during fieldwork carried out over a period of several years in the southern Peruvian Andes. By following the thematic thread of artistic representations of food, this book allows readers to explore a variety of Andean art forms created in both colonial and contemporary contexts. In genres such as the novel, Quechua oral narrative, historical chronicle, testimonies, photography, painting, and film, artists represent Quechua cooks who utilize their access to food preparation and distribution as a tactic for evading the attempts of a patriarchal hegemony to silence their voices, desires, values, and cultural expressions. Whether presented orally, visually, or in a print medium, each of these narratives represents food and cooking as a site where conflict ensues, symbolic meanings are negotiated, and identities are (re)constructed. Food, Power, and Resistance will be of interest to Andean Studies and Food Studies scholars, and to students of Anthropology and Latin American Studies.

A rich ethnographic portrait of food-provisioning processes in a contemporary African city, offering valuable lessons about the powerful roles of gender, migration, exchange, sex, and charity in food acquisition. Based on anthropologist Karen Coen Flynn's study of Mwanza, Tanzania, this work draws on the personal accounts of over 350 market vendors, low, middle and high-income consumers, urban farmers as well as those, including children, who live on the streets. This strikingly original work offers interdisciplinary appeal to a broad audience of both students and professionals interested in anthropology, African studies, urban studies, gender studies and development economics.

Although Ecuador has made considerable strides in addressing gender issues over the years, gender continues to be an important development issue. While access to family planning methods has increased in general, the availability of contraceptives remains limited for the poor. As more women enter the labor force, wage gaps based on gender persist. Ecuador's strong civil society movement puts gender on the public agenda, but land distribution by the government continues to be biased toward men. This report brings to light the most salient gender issues affecting Ecuador's social and economic development today. Its purpose is to reduce gender inequalities in Ecuadoran society and to improve the effectiveness of Ecuador's social and economic development programs. Gender in this report pertains to both men and women and refers to the different experiences, preferences, needs, opportunities and constraints men and women face because of socially ascribed gender roles and expectations. The report contains an overview of gender issues and trends with special attention to the rural sector where almost half the population lives. The authors recommend an overall strategy and priority actions to improve conditions. This report will be of interest to government officials, nongovernmental organizations, academics, and civil society.