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1

Corder, Gwen. "The Deaccessioning and Disposal Practices of Small Museums in Kentucky and Indiana." Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 8, no. 2 (June 2012): 151–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/155019061200800205.

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A survey conducted in 2008 for a graduate degree examined the methods that small museums use to deaccession and dispose of permanent collection items and compared findings against AAM and ICOM standards. An instrument was mailed to 200 large, medium, and small museums. Fifty-seven museums agreed to participate, 33 of which were small museums. Follow-up telephone interviews were conducted with six small museums. Some findings indicate that: small museums use untrained volunteers; small museum administrators do not have in-depth professional museum-training or education themselves; and small museums use money from the sale of collection items to finance operating and facilities’ costs. From these findings and fourteen years of personal experiences, it appears that small museums staff, board members, and volunteers need in-depth education and training in museum and collections management so that they can make better decisions about their collections.
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2

Middleswarth, Vicky. "History and Hardtack a Museum Workshop Program for Kentucky Teachers." Journal of American Culture 12, no. 2 (June 1989): 87–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734x.1989.1202_87.x.

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3

Jaffe, Jerry. "“I Needed to Go to this Tabernacle of Ignorance”." Bulletin for the Study of Religion 42, no. 3 (September 27, 2013): 27–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i3.27.

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On his 2011 comedy album This has to be funny, Marc Maron includes a routine in which he describes a visit to the Creation Museum, located in Petersburg, Kentucky just south of Cincinnati. Maron employs his typical combination of smart and angry wit as he satirizes the Museum and its agenda. This criticism takes the form of describing some of the Museum’s displays, and then reacting to them. The displays he spends the most time critiquing include the Garden of Eden room, animatronics of Old Testament figures, and the Noah’s Ark room. Bergson says that one source of laughter is seeing “the mechanical encrusted on the living” and this seems apt for understanding maron’s critique of displays such as these. Dogmatic religious believers can seem comical when their own beliefs interfere with their ability to adapt to new information—and this is exactly how the displays of the Creation Museum appear, thus making them targets for satire. Further, the museum, with its well documented and unscientific animatronics and dioramas (triceratops with saddles, tyrannosaurus rex eating a pineapple) creates its own dissonance when putting its ideas into sculptural forms. Museums often employ what Barbara Kirsehblatt-Gimblett has described as either in situ or in context display strategies, but both of these seem like empty, hyperreal rhetoric in the pseudoscientific position advocated by the museum.
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4

Moore, William D. "““United We Commemorate””: The Kentucky Pioneer Memorial Association, James Isenberg, and Early Twentieth-Century Heritage Tourism." Public Historian 30, no. 3 (2008): 51–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/tph.2008.30.3.51.

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Abstract The Kentucky Pioneer Memorial Association created an innovative tourist attraction in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, between 1910 and 1935. Led by James L. Isenberg, a boosterist entrepreneur, the KPMA reconstituted the cabin in which Lincoln's parents were married, reconstructed a settlers' stockade, established a museum, secured governmental funding, and forged a coalition in support of heritage tourism. The KPMA indicates that historic preservation and development in the early twentieth century were not exclusively the domains of patricians retreating to a pre-industrial past to mitigate change. Isenberg, a descendent of recent immigrants, established his site as an economic engine for his community.
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5

Hand, Greg. "Trilobite Amphitheater at the Behringer-Crawford Museum Devou Park, Covington, Kentucky." Rocks & Minerals 70, no. 3 (June 1995): 172–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00357529.1995.9926617.

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6

Scott, David W. "Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark? Multi-Media Narratives and Natural Science Museum Discourse at the Creation Museum in Kentucky." Journal of Media and Religion 13, no. 4 (October 2, 2014): 226–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15348423.2014.971570.

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7

Gregory, Karen. "Who's Afraid of Dinosaurs?: The Creation Museum and Family Discovery Center, Petersburg, Kentucky." Contexts 6, no. 1 (February 2007): 74–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ctx.2007.6.1.74.

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8

Davis, Daniel J., David J. Scheaf, and Eleanor B. Williams. "Consumer identification and oppositional organizational identities." International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior 22, no. 3 (September 9, 2019): 278–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijotb-09-2018-0101.

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Purpose Oppositional organizational identities are fraught with conflict and often evoke powerful social and cultural identities. Such identities may be a divisive force among consumers. The purpose of this paper is to understand how consumers construct frames that facilitate identification with oppositional organizational identities. Design/methodology/approach The authors use online reviews from TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, USA. The Creation Museum is an ideal research context due to its location within American public discourse regarding religion and science. Through a grounded theory approach of the reviews, the authors propose three identity frames. Findings The data suggest that consumers primarily construct three frames to identify with the Creation Museum: transformational experiences, interpretive bricolage and oppositional scripts. Together, these frames engender resonance and facilitate consumer identification. Originality/value This paper is one of the first to examine how oppositional organizational identities garner consumer support. Given that consumers are increasingly attentive to organizational processes and the ubiquity of information technology, which reduces the costs of information and interaction, the study provides a much more holistic perspective on oppositional organizational identity and offers a multitude of future avenues for further research.
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9

Staebell, Sandy, and Sue Lynn McDaniel. "On Collaboration: Government Documents and Political Collections in Libraries and Museums." DttP: Documents to the People 48, no. 1 (April 16, 2020): 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/dttp.v48i1.7336.

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Government documents librarians, special collections librarians and museum curators should collaborate. When they do, researchers and students benefit. While government documents tend to report the beginning and the end of the political process, political ephemera, artifacts and manuscripts provide a deeper understanding of what happens in between. Knowledge of readily available political collections equips information specialists to better serve users. Our survey reveals several U.S. academic institutions that provide online access to significant political collections. A close examination of the Rather-Westerman Political Collection at Western Kentucky University demonstrates how some university-held political collections are created, utilized and further developed.
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10

Niemiller, Matthew L., Kurt Helf, and Rickard S. Toomey. "Mammoth Cave: A Hotspot of Subterranean Biodiversity in the United States." Diversity 13, no. 8 (August 12, 2021): 373. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/d13080373.

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The Mammoth Cave System in the Interior Low Plateau karst region in central Kentucky, USA is a global hotspot of cave-limited biodiversity, particularly terrestrial species. We searched the literature, museum accessions, and database records to compile an updated list of troglobiotic and stygobiotic species for the Mammoth Cave System and compare our list with previously published checklists. Our list of cave-limited fauna totals 49 species, with 32 troglobionts and 17 stygobionts. Seven species are endemic to the Mammoth Cave System and other small caves in Mammoth Cave National Park. The Mammoth Cave System is the type locality for 33 cave-limited species. The exceptional diversity at Mammoth Cave is likely related to several factors, such as the high dispersal potential of cave fauna associated with expansive karst exposures, high surface productivity, and a long history of exploration and study. Nearly 80% of the cave-limited fauna is of conservation concern, many of which are at an elevated risk of extinction because of small ranges, few occurrences, and several potential threats.
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11

McMillan, R. "The Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates on Missouri's Western Frontier." Earth Sciences History 29, no. 1 (June 8, 2010): 26–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.29.1.j034662534721751.

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Fossil-bearing sites containing predominantly mastodon, Mammut americanum, remains were discovered west of the Mississippi River on the Osage River in Upper Louisiana only a few decades after the discovery by Longueuil of similar remains at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. The first excavations were conducted in the 1790s by Pierre Chouteau, a fur trader and member of the founding family of St Louis. Chouteau's work was documented by several early travelers, including Georges-Henri-Victor Collot and later by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, among others. It was from Chouteau's excavation that the first mastodon molar from west of the Mississippi River reached Baron Georges Cuvier in Paris, having been sent from Philadelphia by Benjamin Smith Barton. Early nineteenth-century travelers continued to mention the Osage River locality and, by 1816, William Clark displayed fossil specimens in his St Louis Museum. By 1840 the indefatigable fossil collector and museum entrepreneur, Albert C. Koch, began extensive digging in the Osage River basin along with sites in the Bourbeuse River valley and at Kimmswick along the Mississippi River in Missouri. Koch's extensive collection of mastodon bones enabled him to assemble a mounted specimen that he named the Missourium, an exaggerated and poorly reconstructed skeleton that was later identified and properly reassembled by Richard Owen at the British Museum. The specimen was later purchased by the trustees of that museum. The publicity surrounding Koch's work stimulated a veritable ‘bone rush’ to the Osage River in the years preceding the Civil War, with some of the fossils making their way into the collections of the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Following the Civil War, interest shifted to the Mississippi valley and the Kimmswick site just south of St Louis, where ongoing excavations became an attraction during the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis. C. W. Beehler, a St Louis resident, was responsible for the work, a venture that attracted scientists from the Smithsonian as well as other institutions. While none of the principals in the early exploration of fossil sites in Missouri had scientific training, the fact that their collections were passed on to scientific practitioners in Philadelphia, Washington, Paris, and London contributed to the expanding body of information that aided in the development of the field of vertebrate paleontology.
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12

Cherepon, Alan J. "Kentucky Museums." Rocks & Minerals 85, no. 6 (November 20, 2010): 489–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00357529.2010.517148.

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13

Kammer, Thomas W., and William I. Ausich. "Advanced cladid crinoids from the middle Mississippian of the east-central United States: advanced-grade calyces." Journal of Paleontology 68, no. 2 (March 1994): 339–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022336000022927.

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Species of the late Osagean and early Meramecian advanced cladid crinoid genera (suborder Poteriocrinina) Adinocrinus, Eratocrinus, Lekocrinus n. gen., Linocrinus, Sarocrinus, and Worthenocrinus n. gen. from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri are redescribed and redefined from study of type material and museum collections. These species are considered to have advanced-grade calyces because of the substantial size reduction of the infrabasals and basals relative to the radials. Nomenclatural and systematic changes include the following: 1) Eratocrinus coxanus (Worthen, 1882) is a senior synonym of Zeacrinus keokuk Worthen, 1882; 2) E. commaticus (Miller, 1891a) is a senior synonym of Z. blairi Miller and Gurley, 1895; 3) Lekocrinus n. gen. is described and Scaphiocrinus divaricatus Hall, 1860, and Z. planobrachiatus Meek and Worthen, 1860, are assigned to this new genus; 4) Linocrinus praemorsus (Miller and Gurley, 1890a) is a senior synonym of Poteriocrinus lautus Miller and Gurley, 1896; 5) Sarocrinus kirki n. sp. is described; 6) P. varsoviensis Worthen, 1882, is assigned to Sarocrinus and is a senior synonym of P. tentaculatus Worthen, 1883, P. granilineus Miller and Gurley, 1890a, Z. pocillum Miller, 1891b, S. nitidus Kirk, 1942, and S. plenus Kirk, 1942; 7) P. asperatus Worthen, 1882, is assigned to Sarocrinus; 8) Worthenocrinus n. gen. is described and W. paterus n. sp. is assigned to this new genus; 9) Poteriocrinus iowensis Worthen, 1882, is considered a nomen dubium and placed in incertae sedis.
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Kammer, Thomas W., and William I. Ausich. "Primitive cladid crinoids from upper Osagean-lower Meramecian (Mississippian) rocks of east-central United States." Journal of Paleontology 70, no. 5 (September 1996): 835–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022336000023878.

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Species of the late Osagean and early Meramecian primitive cladid crinoid generaAtelestocrinus, Barycrinus, Cestocrinus, Costalocrinus, Cyathocrinites, Meniscocrinusn. gen.,Parisocrinus, Pellecrinus, andSaccosomopsisfrom Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee are reviewed, redescribed, and redefined from study of type material, museum collections, and field collections. Nomenclatural and systematic acts include the following: 1)Barycrinus spurius(Hall, 1858) is a senior synonym ofCyathocrinus tumidusHall, 1858,C. protuberansHall, 1858, andB. mammatusMeek and Worthen, 1873; 2)B. rhombiferus(Owen and Shumard, 1852a) is a senior synonym ofC. sculptilisHall, 1860,C. thomaeHall, 1860,C. hoveyiHall, 1861a,C. wachsmuthiMeek and Worthen, 1861,B. herculeusMeek and Worthen, 1868,B. pentagonusMeek and Worthen, 1873,B. striatusWorthen, 1875,B. boonvillensisMiller, 1891b,B. formosusMiller and Gurley, 1894,B. washingtonensisMiller and Gurley, 1895, andB. elrodiMiller and Gurley, 1896a; 3)B. magister(Hall, 1858) is a senior synonym ofC. solidusHall, 1861a andB. magnificusMeek and Worthen, 1868; 4)B. stellatus(Hall, 1858) is a senior synonym ofC. bullatusHall, 1858,C. angulatusMeek and Worthen, 1860,C. quinquelobusMeek and Worthen, 1865, andB. astericusVan Sant, 1964; 5)B. crassibrachiatus(Hall, 1860) is a senior synonym ofB. princepsMiller and Gurley, 1890a; 6)B. geometricusMeek and Worthen, 1873, is considered a nomen dubium; 7)B. benedicti(Miller, 1891a) is considered a nomen dubium; 8)Cyathocrinus signatusMiller and Gurley, 1894, is assigned toCestocrinusand is a senior synonym ofCestocrinus striatusKirk, 1940; 9)Cyathocrinites iowensis(Owen and Shumard, 1850) is a senior synonym ofC. malvaceusHall, 1858,C. divaricatusHall, 1858,C. rotundatusHall, 1858,C. viminalisHall, 1861a,C. parvibrachiatusHall, 1861a,C. hamiltonensisWorthen, 1882,C. nodosusWachsmuth and Springer, 1890,C. brevisacculusWachsmuth and Springer, 1890,C. opimusMiller and Gurley, 1890a, andC. gurleyiMiller, 1891a; 10)C. kelloggi(White, 1862) is a senior synonym ofC. subtumidusMeek and Worthen, 1865; 11)C. farleyi(Meek and Worthen, 1866b) is a senior synonym ofC. andersoniMiller and Gurley, 1894,C. granulosusRowley, 1902, andC. snivelyiRowley, 1902; 12)C. harrodi(Wachsmuth and Springer, 1880) is a senior synonym ofC. boonvillensisMiller, 1891b,C. gorbyiMiller, 1892b, andC. astralusKammer, 1984; 13)Meniscocrinusn. gen. is described andM. magnitubusn. sp. is assigned to this new genus; 14)C. labyrinthicusMiller, 1891a, is assigned toParisocrinus; 15)C. intermediusHall, 1858, is assigned toPellecrinus; and 16)C. insperatusLyon, 1869, is assigned toSaccosomopsisand is a senior synonym ofC.?poteriumMeek and Worthen, 1870.
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Kammer, Thomas W., and William I. Ausich. "Advanced cladid crinoids from the middle Mississippian of the east-central United States: intermediate-grade calyces." Journal of Paleontology 67, no. 4 (July 1993): 614–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022336000024951.

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Species of the late Osagean and early Meramecian advanced cladid crinoid genera (suborder Poteriocrinina) Abrotocrinus, Aulocrinus, Cromyocrinus. Decadocrinus, Dinotocrinus, Holcocrinus, Hylodecrinus, Lanecrinus n. gen., Pachylocrinus, Parascytalocrinus n. gen., and Stinocrinus from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri are redescribed and redefined from study of type material and museum collections. Nomenclatural and systematic acts include the following: 1) Abrotocrinus cymosus Miller and Gurley, 1890a, is a valid species and not a synonym of A. coreyi (Meek and Worthen, 1869); 2) A. coreyi is a senior synonym of Poteriocrinus orestes Worthen, 1882; 3) Scaphiocrinus manus Miller and Gurley, 1890a, is assigned to Abrotocrinus; 4) Abrotocrinus granulatus n. sp. is described; 5) S. bellus Miller and Gurley, 1890a, is assigned to Aulocrinus and is a senior synonym of Aulocrinus agassizi Wachsmuth and Springer, 1897; 6) S. orbicularis Hall, 1861a, is assigned to Cromyocrinus; 7) P. latidactylus Worthen, 1882, is assigned to Dinotocrinus; 8) S. gibsoni White, 1878, is assigned to Hylodecrinus with P. nauvooensis Worthen, 1882, questionably placed in synonymy; 9) P. briareus Worthen, 1882, is assigned to Hylodecrinus and is a senior synonym of S. lacunosus Miller and Gurley, 1890a, S. boonvillensis Miller, 1891b, S. constrictus Miller, 1891a, and S. arrosus Miller and Gurley, 1893; 10) S. bonoensis Miller and Gurley, 1890a, is assigned to Hylodecrinus; 11) Hylodecrinus robustus n. sp. is described; 12) P. validus Worthen, 1882, is questionably assigned to Hylodecrinus; 13) Lanecrinus n. gen. is described and the following species are assigned to this new genus: S. halli Hall, 1861 a, S. depressus Meek and Worthen, 1870, P. milleri Wetherby, 1881, P. fountainensis Worthen, 1882, S. repertus Miller and Gurley, 1890a, and Ramulocrinus consectatus Strimple and Watkins, 1969; P. otterensis Worthen, 1882, is questionably assigned to Lanecrinus; 14) Lanecrinus depressus is the senior synonym of P. ulrichi Worthen in Miller, 1889, and S. maniformis Miller, 1892; 15) Lanecrinus repertus is the senior synonym of S. gorbyi Miller, 1891a; 16) P. asper Worthen, 1882, is assigned to Pachylocrinus and is a senior synonym of S. extensus Wachsmuth and Springer, 1886; 17) Parascytalocrinus n. gen. is described and the following species are assigned to this new genus: Poteriocrinus hamiltonensis Worthen, 1882, and Scytalocrinus validus Wachsmuth and Springer, 1897; 18) Poteriocrinites mcadamsi Meek and Worthen, 1873, is questionably placed in synonymy with Parascytalocrinus hamiltonensis; and 19) Poteriocrinus burketi Worthen, 1882, nomen dubium and Zeacrinus dubius Miller and Gurley, 1890a, are placed in Incertae Sedis.Cromyocrinus orbicularis is the oldest species of its genus extending the range of the genus downward from the Upper to the Lower Mississippian.
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16

Slack, Gordy. "T-Rex in Wonderland: Kentucky’s 27-million-dollar Creation Museum Turns One." Evolution: Education and Outreach 1, no. 3 (June 19, 2008): 342–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12052-008-0063-6.

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17

KITLV, Redactie. "Book reviews." New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 66, no. 3-4 (January 1, 1992): 249–318. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/13822373-90002001.

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-Jay B. Haviser, Jerald T. Milanich ,First encounters: Spanish explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570. Gainesville FL: Florida Museum of Natural History & University Presses of Florida, 1989. 221 pp., Susan Milbrath (eds)-Marvin Lunenfeld, The Libro de las profecías of Christopher Columbus: an en face edition. Delano C. West & August Kling, translation and commentary. Gainesville FL: University of Florida Press, 1991. x + 274 pp.-Suzannah England, Charles R. Ewen, From Spaniard to Creole: the archaeology of cultural formation at Puerto Real, Haiti. Tuscaloosa AL; University of Alabama Press, 1991. xvi + 155 pp.-Piero Gleijeses, Bruce Palmer Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean: the Dominican crisis of 1965. Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1989.-Piero Gleijeses, Herbert G. Schoonmaker, Military crisis management: U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. 152 pp.-Jacqueline A. Braveboy-Wagner, Fitzroy André Baptiste, War, cooperation, and conflict: the European possessions in the Caribbean, 1939-1945. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. xiv + 351 pp.-Peter Meel, Paul Sutton, Europe and the Caribbean. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1991. xii + 260 pp.-Peter Meel, Betty Secoc-Dahlberg, The Dutch Caribbean: prospects for democracy. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990. xix + 333 pp.-Michiel Baud, Rosario Espinal, Autoritarismo y democracía en la política dominicana. San José, Costa Rica: Ediciones CAPEL, 1987. 208 pp.-A.J.G. Reinders, J.M.R. Schrils, Een democratie in gevaar: een verslag van de situatie op Curacao tot 1987. Assen, Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990. xii + 292 pp.-Andrés Serbin, David W. Dent, Handbook of political science research on Latin America: trends from the 1960s to the 1990s. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1990.-D. Gail Saunders, Dean W. Collinwood, The Bahamas between worlds. Decatur IL: White Sound Press, 1989. vii + 119 pp.-D. Gail Saunders, Dean W. Collinwood ,Modern Bahamian society. Parkersburg IA: Caribbean Books, 1989. 278 pp., Steve Dodge (eds)-Peter Hulme, Pierrette Frickey, Critical perspectives on Jean Rhys. Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1990. 235 pp.-Alvina Ruprecht, Lloyd W. Brown, El Dorado and Paradise: Canada and the Caribbean in Austin Clarke's fiction. Parkersburg IA: Caribbean Books, 1989. xv + 207 pp.-Ineke Phaf, Michiel van Kempen, De Surinaamse literatuur 1970-1985: een documentatie. Paramaribo: Uitgeverij de Volksboekwinkel, 1987. 406 pp.-Genevieve Escure, Barbara Lalla ,Language in exile: three hundred years of Jamaican Creole. Tuscaloosa AL: University of Alabama Press, 1990. xvii + 253 pp., Jean D'Costa (eds)-Charles V. Carnegie, G. Llewellyn Watson, Jamaican sayings: with notes on folklore, aesthetics, and social control.Tallahassee FL: Florida A & M University Press, 1991. xvi + 292 pp.-Donald R. Hill, Kaiso, calypso music. David Rudder in conversation with John La Rose. London: New Beacon Books, 1990. 33 pp.-Mark Sebba, John Victor Singler, Pidgin and creole tense-mood-aspect systems. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990. xvi + 240 pp.-Dale Tomich, Pedro San Miguel, El mundo que creó el azúcar: las haciendas en Vega Baja, 1800-873. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracán, 1989. 224 pp.-César J. Ayala, Juan José Baldrich, Sembraron la no siembra: los cosecheros de tabaco puertorriqueños frente a las corporaciones tabacaleras, 1920-1934. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracán, 1988.-Robert Forster, Jean-Michel Deveau, La traite rochelaise. Paris: Kathala, 1990. 334 pp.-Ernst van den Boogaart, Johannes Menne Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade, 1600-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. xiv + 428 pp.-W.E. Renkema, T. van der Lee, Plantages op Curacao en hun eigenaren (1708-1845): namen en data voornamelijk ontleend aan transportakten. Leiden, the Netherlands: Grafaria, 1989. xii + 87 pp.-Mavis C. Campbell, Wim Hoogbergen, The Boni Maroon wars in Suriname. Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1990. xvii + 254 pp.-Rafael Duharte Jiménez, Carlos Esteban Dieve, Los guerrilleros negros: esclavos fugitivos y cimarrones en Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1989. 307 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Hans Ramsoedh, Suriname 1933-1944: koloniale politiek en beleid onder Gouverneur Kielstra. Delft, the Netherlands: Eburon, 1990. 255 pp.-Gert Oostindie, Kees Lagerberg, Onvoltooid verleden: de dekolonisatie van Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen. Tilburg, the Netherlands: Instituut voor Ontwikkelingsvraagstukken, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, 1989. ii + 265 pp.-Aisha Khan, Anthony de Verteuil, Eight East Indian immigrants. Port of Spain: Paria, 1989. xiv + 318 pp.-John Stiles, Willie L. Baber, The economizing strategy: an application and critique. New York: Peter Lang, 1988. xiii + 232 pp.-Faye V. Harrison, M.G. Smith, Poverty in Jamaica. Kingston: Institute of social and economic research, 1989. xxii + 167 pp.-Sidney W. Mintz, Dorian Powell ,Street foods of Kingston. Mona, Jamaica: Institute of social and economic research, 1990. xii + 125 pp., Erna Brodber, Eleanor Wint (eds)-Yona Jérome, Michel S. Laguerre, Urban poverty in the Caribbean: French Martinique as a social laboratory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. xiv + 181 pp.
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18

Beare, Alexander Hudson. "Prosthetic Memories in The Sopranos." M/C Journal 22, no. 5 (October 9, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1586.

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In the HBO series The Sopranos, Tony and his friends use “prosthetic memories” to anchor their ethnic and criminal identities. Prosthetic memories were theorised by Alison Landsberg in her book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. She argues that prosthetic memories are memories acquired through the mass media and do not come from a person’s lived experience in any sense (Landsberg 20). In this article, I will outline how The Sopranos television show and its characters interact with prosthetic memories. Extending Christopher Kocela’s work on The Sopranos and white ethnicities, I will show how characters use prosthetic memories to define their ethnicity while the show itself knowingly plays with this to provide comedic and critical commentary about the influence of gangster stereotypes. According to Landsberg, prosthetic memories are powerful memories of historical events or narratives that an individual was not present for. They are typically formed at the "interface between a personal and historical narrative about the past at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or museum" (2). It is at such a moment that a person can suture themselves into a larger history. Consequently, these memories do not just enhance an individual’s apprehension of a historical event. Rather, they create a deeply felt personal memory of a past event through which they did not live (Landsberg 4). Prosthetic memories are largely made available through the technologies of mass culture such as film, television and experiential places like museums. Their accessibility helps to differentiate them from other cultural strategies for passing on memories to future generations. Other strategies have typically been rooted in the cultural or racial status of an individual (Landsberg 22). In addition, Landsberg asserts that the successfulness of mnemotechnic rituals like the Jewish Passover Seder is dependent on ethnicity (26). Similarly, Walter Benn Michaels concludes that these rituals can only be effective if the individual has “some prior assumption of identity between you and them and this assumption is often racial” (680). Contrastingly, the perpetuation of prosthetic memories through mass media makes them widely accessible across racial lines. According to Landsberg, they are not “naturally- ethnically, racially or biologically- one’s intended inheritance” (26). Prosthetic memories introduce the possibility that memories can be acquired by anyone. The technologies of mass culture make these memories portable and as such, challenges the assumption that memory is “in anyway essential or organically grounded or the private property of a specific ethnic or racial group” (27). In The Sopranos, most characters are third or fourth generation Italian immigrants. Much like for many ‘real’ Italian migrants, time has severed familial connections to their homeland (see Landsberg 49-55). Landsberg suggests that immigrants initially became Americanised in order to escape persecution and being labelled as “other” (51). This meant that ethnically exclusive mnemotechnic rituals were not preserved for subsequent generations of immigrants. In order to sustain an ethnic identity, immigrants (and the characters in The Sopranos) have been forced to turn to more accessible tools like prosthetic memories. Christopher Kocela’s analysis of Italian-Americanness in The Sopranos, argues that characters maintain an Italian American ethnicity while still racially identifying as white. According to Colin Webster “white ethnicity” can be best exemplified through the long tradition of European immigration to America (295). With the influx of immigrants, there was a codification of the idea that “some whites are ‘whiter’ than others” (Webster 297). European working-class immigrants struggled to be afforded the same white “privileges” and membership to the white race. Instead, they were defined as being members of “other” white ethnicities. Roediger argued that such a denial of whiteness pushed European immigrants to insist on their own whiteness by defining themselves against other ethnic minorities like African Americans (8). Between 1890 and 1945, eventual assimilation saw white ethnicities become “fully white” (Roediger 8). Webster argues that: “In this sense, whiteness is nearly always salvageable in a way that black, Mexican, Asian, and Native American ethnicity is not (sic)” (Webster 297). In a similar vein, Kocela suggests that the assimilated characters in The Sopranos benefit from their white racial status while still maintaining an Italian ethnicity. This celebration of ethnic difference by Tony and his friends can serve as a smokescreen for the silent maintenance of whiteness (Kocela 14). Kocela suggests that the show critiques these types of responses that characters have to their ethnicity, stating that "we do not learn from The Sopranos the language of ethnic sons deprived of their Italian godfathers, but the language of racial misrecognition spoken by sons whose lost white fathers were never really their own" (16).Kocela’s article provides a useful discussion about the relationship that characters in The Sopranos have with their ethnicity. This article extends this discussion by showing how prosthetic memories and characters’ understanding of mass media are a crucial element in how such ethnic identities are formed. This will lead to a discussion about how The Sopranos comments on and treats these adopted stereotypes. “What do poor Italian-immigrants have to do with you?”: How Characters Interact with Prosthetic MemoriesCharacters in The Sopranos heavily rely upon stereotypes from gangster films to perform their version of Italian Americanness. A reliance on prosthetic memories from such films leads to the manifestation of violence being intertwined with the characters’ ethnic identities. Brian Faucette has discussed the inherent link between violence and gangster films from the 1930s-60s. He claims that “it was violence that enabled the upward mobility of these figures” (76). It is almost impossible to separate violence from the gangster films referenced in The Sopranos. As such, violence becomes part of the ritualistic ways prosthetic memories are created. This is evident in the pilot episode of The Sopranos when Christopher performs his first hit (kill). In the scene, he shoots rival gang member, Emil, in the back of the head at Satriales Pork Store. Before the hit, the pair are standing close together in front of a pinboard collage of “classic” Italian movie gangsters. As they both walk away in opposite directions the camera pulls out diagonally to follow Christopher. Throughout the duration of the shot, the collage is always placed behind Christopher. Finally, when the pan stops, Christopher is positioned in the foreground, with the collage behind him to the right. The placement of the collage gives it a front row seat to the ensuing murder while serving as a kind of script for it. It is not enough for Christopher to simply kill Emil, rather it is important that it is done in the presence of his idols in order to ensure his enhanced identification with them. Moreover, for Christopher, being an Italian American gangster and violence are inseparable. He must perform acts of extreme violence in order to suture himself into a larger, stereotypical narrative, that equates Italian-Americanness with the mafia. Through Landsberg’s theory, it is possible to see the intertwined relationship between performances of Italian-Americanness and violence. To enact their version of Italian-Americanism, characters follow the script of masculine-violence inherent to gangster films. As well as tools to perform Italian American identities, prosthetic memories can be used by characters to deny their whiteness. Kocela argues that Tony can deny or affirm his whiteness, depending on the situation. According to Kocela, Tony’s economic success is intrinsically linked to his racial status as a white man (16). However, this is not a view shared by characters in the show. In the episode From Where to Eternity Dr. Melfi asks Tony how he justifies his criminal lifestyle: Tony: When America opened the floodgates and let all us Italians in, what do you think they were doing it for? ... The Carnegies and the Rockefellers, they needed worker bees and there we were. But some of us didn't want to swarm around their hive and lose who we were. We wanted to stay Italian and preserve the things that meant something to us: honor, and family, and loyalty. ... Now we weren't educated like the Americans, but we had the balls to take what we wanted. And those other fucks, the J.P. Morgans, they were crooks and killers too, but that was the business, right? The American way.Dr. Melfi: That might all be true. But what do poor Italian immigrants have to do with you and what happens every morning when you step out of bed?Kocela describes Tony’s response as a “textbook recitation of the two-family myth of Italian-American identity in which criminal activities are justified in a need to resist assimilation” (28). It is evident that for Tony, being Italian American is defined by being ethnically different. To admit that whiteness contributes to his economic success would undermine the justification he gives for his criminal lifestyle and his self-perceived status as an Italian American. Despite this, Melfi’s statement rings true. The experience of “poor Italian immigrants” does not affect Tony’s daily lifestyle. Characters in The Sopranos do not face the same oppression and discrimination as first-generation migrants (Kocela 28). After decades of assimilation, Tony and his friends turn to the narratives of discrimination and ethnic difference present in gangster films. This is exemplified through Tony’s identification with Vito Corleone from The Godfather. Vito exemplifies Tony’s notion of Italian Americanism. He was a poor immigrant that turned to criminality to protect the Italian-American community and their way of life. Vito is also connected to Italy in a way that Tony admires. When Paulie asks Tony what his favourite scene from The Godfather is he responds with: Don Ciccio’s Villa, when Vito goes back to Sicily, the crickets, the great old house. Maybe it’s because I’m going over there, ya know? Gangster films and representations of Italian-Americanness often deliberately differentiate Italian families from “regular” white people (D’Acierno 566). According to D’Acierno, gangster narratives often involve two types of Italian families, one that has been left powerless by its assimilation to American culture and another that has resisted this through organised crime (D’Acierno 567). Tony and his friends tap into these narratives in their attempt to create prosthetic memories that differentiate their ethnicity and ultimately draw attention away from the whiteness which silently benefits them.The “inauthenticity” of these prosthetic memories is probably most pronounced in the episode Commendatori when Tony, Christopher and Paulie visit Italy. The trip shatters the expectations that the characters had of their homeland and sheds light on some of their delusions about what it means to be Italian. Paulie expects to love Italy and be greeted with open arms by the locals. Unfortunately, he dislikes it all because it is too foreign for him. At the banquet, Paulie finds the authentic Italian octopus uneatable and instead orders “spaghetti and gravy.” He is also unable to use the bathrooms because he is so used to American toilets. When at a local café he tries to initiate conversation with some local men using broken Italian. Even though they hear him, the group ignores him. Despite all this Paulie, pretends that it was a great trip:Big Pussy: So how was it?Paulie: Fabulous, I felt right at home… I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t been … especially any Italian. The prosthetic memories that defined these characters’ perceptions of Italy are based on the American media’s portrayal of Italy. Commendatori thus exposes the differences between what is “authentically Italian” and the prosthetic memories about Italy generated by American gangster films. By the end of the episode it has become clear that these “inauthentic” prosthetic memories have forged an entirely different, hybrid ethnic identity.“Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes”: How The Sopranos Treats Prosthetic MemoriesIntertextuality is an important way through which the audience can understand how The Sopranos treats prosthetic memories. The prosthetic memories generated by characters in The Sopranos are heavily based on stereotypes of Italian Americans. Papaleo states that the Italian stereotype is “composed of overreactions: after bowing, smiling and being funny, the Italian loses control” (93). Mafia films are crucial in defining the identity of Tony and his friends, and David Pattie suggests that they are a “symbolic framework within which Tony, Paulie, Christopher and Silvio attempt to find meaning and justification for their lives” (137). In a similar way, the audience is invited to use these same films as a frame for watching The Sopranos itself. Mafia stereotypes are one of the dominant ways that depict Italian Americans on screen. According to Larke-Walsh, this has perpetuated the belief that crime and Italian-Americanness are synonymous with each other (226). The show is obsessively referential and relies on the viewer’s knowledge of these films for much of its effect. Pattie describes how such use of intertextuality can be explained: "[there are] two ways of looking at self-referential programs: one in which readings of other media texts can be contained first of all within the film or program in which they occur; and a more covert type of referential work, which relies almost exclusively on the audience’s detailed, constantly-updated cultural intelligence" (137). The Sopranos operates on both levels as references that are simultaneously textual and meta-textual. This is evident through the way the show treats The Godfather films. They are by far the most frequently mentioned ones (Golden 95). According to Chris Messenger, the central link between the two is the acknowledgement that “America itself has been totally colonised by The Godfather” (Messenger 95). The Godfather is an urtext that frames how audiences are invited to view the show. As such, The Sopranos invites the viewer to use the Godfather as a lens to uncover extra layers of meaning. For example, The Sopranos uses the misguided ways in which its characters have taken on stereotypes from The Godfather as a source of humour. The series plays on the fact that characters will allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour. In the pilot episode, Christopher calls “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero to help him dispose of a body. Christopher informs Pussy that it’s his plan to leave the body at a garbage stop to be discovered by the rival Czechoslovakians. Christopher hoped this would emulate the “Luca Brasi situation” from The Godfather and intimidate the Czechoslovakians. When he explains this to Pussy, they have the following exchange. Pussy: The Kolar uncle is gonna find a kid dead on one of his bins and get on our fuckin’ business… no way!Christopher: Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes.Pussy: Luca Brasi… Luca! There are differences Christopher… okay… from the Luca Brasi situation and this. Look, the Kolar’s know a kid is dead, it hardens their position... plus now the cops are lookin’ for a fuckin’ murderer!To members of the audience who are familiar with The Godfather, it immediately becomes clear that Christopher is comically misguided. In the Godfather, Luca Brasi was murdered because he was caught trying to infiltrate a powerful rival organisation. Fish wrapped in his bullet-proof vest were then sent back to the Corleones in order to notify them that their plan had been foiled (“Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”). The “Luca Brasi situation” was a calculated and strategic move whereas Christopher’s situation amounts to a seemingly random, unauthorised killing. This sequence in The Sopranos uses this comparison for comedic effect and plays on the stereotype that all Italian Americans are mafioso and that all mafia behaviour is interchangeable. The symbolic language of the “Luca Brasi” scene is contrasted with explicit shots of a slumped, lifeless body. These shots are a source of macabre humour. The audience is invited to laugh at the contrast between the subtle, thoughtful nature of the Luca Brasi situation and the brash violence of Christopher’s own predicament. Through this comedic situation, The Sopranos critiques Christopher’s aspiration to be a godfather-esque gangster by showing his incompetence. Christopher’s misreading of the situation is further emphasised by his mistakenly referring to Luca Brasi as “Louis”. After Pussy says: “There are differences… from the Luca Brasi situation and this”, the dialogue pauses and the scene cuts to an immediate close up of Emil’s body falling to the side. This illustrates that part of the joke is that characters are willing to allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour, no matter how inappropriate. Therefore, Christopher is willing to refer to a scene from the Godfather that fails to account for the context of a situation without even consulting the knowledge of Big Pussy. This leads to a larger critique of the ways in which films like The Godfather are presented as a script for all Italian Americans to follow. Nevertheless, The Sopranos still has a role in perpetuating these same stereotypes. Tomasulo has argued that "despite its use of postclassical generic, narrative aesthetic devices, and its creation by an Italian American, The Sopranos relies heavily on demeaning tropes of ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender" (206). This results in a perpetuation of negative stereotypes about working class Italian Americans that affirm old Hollywood clichés. While The Sopranos has tried to transcend this through complex characterisation, irony and universalisation, Tomasulo asserts that most audiences “take The Sopranos as straight - that is a raw unvarnished anthropology of Americans of Italian descent” (206). The origin of characters’ anti-social personalities seems to stem directly from their ethnicity and their being Italian appears to constitute an explanation for their behaviour. In his article Kocela discusses the complicated relationship that characters have with their white ethnicity. Through an application of Landsberg’s theory it is possible to understand how these ethnicities are initially formed and how they continue to circulate. In response to assimilation, characters in The Sopranos have turned to mass media to generate prosthetic memories of their ethnic heritage. These memories generally originate in classic gangster films. They are used by characters in The Sopranos to deny their whiteness and justify their criminality. The Sopranos itself comments on the complex ways that characters interpret gangster film stereotypes for both comedic and critical commentary. In the epilogue of her book, Landsberg asks: “How can we be sure the politics inspired by prosthetic memories are progressive and ethical?” Prosthetic memories generated by gangster texts are almost inherently problematic. Scholars have criticised the hyper-aggressive masculinity and regressive gender roles that are rampant throughout the genre (Larke-Walsh 226). For Tony and his friends, these problematic gender politics have helped justify their criminal lifestyle and valorised violence as part of ethnic performance. Similarly, these stereotypes are not always circulated critically and are at times perpetuated for audience enjoyment. AcknowledgmentI would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Michelle Phillipov for providing constructive feedback on earlier drafts. References“Commendatori.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. Tim Van Patten. HBO, 2000. DVD.Coppola, Francis, and Mario Puzo. The Godfather. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Home Video, 1972.“D-Girl.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Todd A. Kessler. Dir. Allen Coulter. HBO, 2000. DVD.D'Acierno, Pellegrino. “Cinema Paradiso.” The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts. New York: Garland, 1999. 563-690.Faucette, Brian. "Interrogations of Masculinity: Violence and the Retro-Gangster Cycle of the 60s." Atenea 28.1 (2008): 75-85.“From Where to Eternity.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Michael Imperioli. Dir. Henry Bronchtein. HBO, 2000. DVD. Golden, Cameron. "You're Annette Bening? Dreams and Hollywood Subtext in The Sopranos." Lavery, David. Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from H.B.O. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. 91-103.Kocela, Christopher. "Unmade Men: The Sopranos after Whiteness." Postmodern Culture 15.2 (2005). <http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.105/15.2kocela.html>.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memories: The Transformation of American Rememberance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Messenger, Christopher. Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became Our Gang. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002.Michaels, Walter Ben. "Race into Culture: A Critical Geneology of Cultural Identity." Critical Inquiry 18.4 (1992): 655-85.Larke-Walsh, George. Screening the Mafia: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Mobsters from The Godfather to The Sopranos. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010.Papaleo, Joseph. "Ethnic Images and Ethnic Fate: The Media Image of Italian Americans." Ethnic Images in American Film and Television (1978): 44-95.Pattie, David. "Mobbed Up: The Sopranos and the Modern Gangster Film." Lavery, David. This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. New York: Wallflower Press, 2002. 137-152.Roediger, D.R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso, 2007. Thorburn, D. "The Sopranos." In The Essential H.B.O Reader, eds. G. Edgerton and J. Jones. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008. 61-70.Tomasulo, Frank. "The Guinea as Tragic Hero: The Complex Representation of Italian Americans." In The Essential Sopranos Reader, eds. David Lavery, Douglas Howard, and Paul Levinson. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2011. 196-207.“The Sopranos.” The Sopranos: The Complete First Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. David Chase. HBO, 1999. DVD. “Walk like a Man.” The Sopranos: The Complete Sixth Season. Writ. Terence Winter. Dir. Terence Winter. HBO, 2007. DVD. Webster, Colin. "Marginalized White Ethnicity, Race and Crime." Theoretical Criminology 12 (2008): 293-312.
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19

Green, Lelia, and Van Hong Nguyen. "Cooking from Life: The Real Recipe for Street Food in Ha Noi." M/C Journal 16, no. 3 (June 23, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.654.

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Abstract:
Introduction This paper is based upon an investigation into the life of a street market in the city of Ha Noi in Vietnam, and experience of the street food served on Ha Noi’s pavements. It draws upon interviews with itinerant food vendors conducted by the researchers and upon accounts of their daily lives from a Vietnamese film subtitled in English and French, sourced from the Vietnamese Women’s Museum (Jensen). The research considers the lives of the people making and selling street food against the distilled versions of cultural experience accessible through the pages of two recent English language cookbooks focussing upon this cuisine. The data from the fieldwork is used as a point for critical comparison (Fram) with recipes and descriptions from Hanoi Street Food (Vandenberghe and Thys) and Vietnamese Street Food (Lister and Pohl), two recent relevant English language cookbooks. The research question addressed is “How are the everyday lives of Vietnamese street market cooks (mis)represented in cookery-related books published for an English-language readership?” The research team comprises an Australian Cultural Studies academic (Lelia Green) and a bi-lingual Vietnamese researcher (Nguyen Hong Van), who is Ha Noi born and bred, but who has lived overseas and whose first degree, in Sociology, is from a Canadian university. In each other’s company and over a period of some weeks, Lelia and Van spent more than 40 hours on ethnographic fieldwork in street markets, and interviewing street vendors. The purpose of the research was exploratory, but it was also undertaken as a means of making the labour and lives of marginalised women more visible, since most itinerant food vendors in Vietnam are women (Jensen). As Bhomik notes, male vendors “are engaged in motor cycle repair or sale of higher priced goods such as personal products, souvenirs etc. and their earnings are higher” (2261). Although the teamwork between Lelia and Van went some way to resolve the challenges posed by insider/outsider qualitative research (Corbin, Dwyer, and Buckle), Van has never lived or worked as a street vendor. First Take an Informal Street Market … Eating on the Street An informal Vietnamese street market is a multi-layered space, ordered according to the geography of the area in which the food is prepared and consumed. The informality of a street market indicates its status between legitimacy and repression. Informal street markets spring up in locales where there is significant demand—usually office workers nearby, and schools. The food they sell is cheap and flavourful, catering for the needs of people who have little time or money and want something hot and nourishing to start, punctuate, or end the day. As markets grow, so the vendors in the market constitute a secondary population in need of sustenance. Itinerant street vendors carry with them everything they need for their day’s work. Typically this includes a little oil or coal-based stove, their raw ingredients, dishes or trays for food preparation and serving, often a bowl for washing food or utensils, and a large bag to carry the dirty dishes used by their customers. Often these tools of their trade will be carried in two baskets balanced upon a pole that acts as a yoke across the vendor’s neck. Sometimes well-resourced vendors will also carry, (or push a bicycle or cart with), sets of small plastic stools and tables, so that their clients can sit and enjoy their food. In the semi-tropical climate of Ha Noi, carrying the raw materials to cook for and feed dozens of patrons is a tiring and difficult business. These street vendors’s lives are made more complex by the semi-legitimacy of the informal street market where itinerants are viewed as potential sources of income by a series of officials who extort small but frequent payments in the form of demanding bribes, or levying fines for illegal activity such as obstructing the pavement (Lincoln). Trung, who sells crab noodles, says the police are the most difficult aspect of her job: “they can come anytime and confiscate all my stuff and give me a fine. One time I was so panicked when I saw them approaching on a small truck that I took all my bowls and ran. The bowl slipped out of my hands and cut into my leg. I still have a deep scar from that accident” (Trung). Now add a smattering of street vendors. Bánh Mỳ: Bread Rolls “1 French baguette”, states the Vandenberghe and Thys recipe for bánh mỳ, implicitly acknowledging the hundred years of French colonisation which provides Vietnam with its excellent breads and pastries, “beat the eggs lightly in a mixing bowl, crumble the paté and combine the paté and the lightly beaten eggs. Put the oil in a small frying pan and cook the omelette […] fold the omelette double and put it on the [grilled, heated] bread […] the variations are endless” (71). The young Vietnamese woman, Anh, sells bánh mỳ trứng ngải cứu, bread rolls with egg cooked with mugwort, an aromatic leafy herb. She explains her initial motivation to sell food on the street: “some women in my village already came to the city to sell. I can’t earn much money at home and I need money to send my children to school, so I decided to follow them” (Anh). She shares rented accommodation in the city with other women—sometimes up to ten people in a room (Jensen)—and starts her day at 4.30am, washing vegetables and preparing her baskets. Although a street trader herself, she is networked into a complex set of supply and delivery connections. Her eggs and bread are delivered fresh each morning and she buys the mugwort from a market near her lodgings. “I leave home around 6am and start walking along the streets. […] I mostly sell to shop keepers. They have to stay in their shop so I bring breakfast to them. I walk through a lot of streets, whenever someone calls out I will stop and make bread for them” (Anh). Mid-morning, at around 10am, Anh goes back to her home to have lunch and prepare for the afternoon, with a fresh delivery of eggs around 1.00-1.30pm. Usually, she leaves again around 2.00pm “but if it’s too hot outside, I will stay until 3pm, because it is very tiring to walk in the heat, and people don’t eat that early either. I go home whenever I sell out […], sometimes as early as 4pm, or as late as 7pm” (Anh). Like many street vendors, Anh has sought out points of contact with the local community to punctuate her walking with episodes of rest. Her customers are mainly other Vietnamese people, “shop keepers and residents of the streets I walk along every day. There is an old lady. I sit in front of her shop every afternoon from 3pm to 5pm. She eats one egg every day” (Anh). Anh has been selling Bánh mỳ on the streets for three years, but this is not her only source of income: “At home I grow rice, but I can only harvest it at the end of the season. It only takes a storm or hail to destroy the whole effort I spend for months […] This [food] is very easy to make, and I make a little profit everyday” (Anh). She has never worked from a recipe book: “I think only people in hotels, like a big chef who makes complicated dishes need recipes, this one is very easy, just a common everyday food” (Anh). As for the problems posed by the policing of informal markets, Anh says: “if I am not careful, the ward police will give me a fine for selling on the street.” Such a calamity can write off the profit of many hours’ or days’ work. Xôi: Sticky Rice Xôi is a popular street food dish, and Lister and Pohl provide two recipes, one for xôi lạc (sticky rice with peanuts)(68), and one for xôi xéo (sticky rice with turmeric and mung beans, and fried shallots) (80). Nga, the xôi seller interviewed for this research, sells both types of sticky rice along with xôi gậc (a festive red sticky rice cooked with and coloured by spiny bitter gourd, and typically eaten at Tết, the celebration for the Lunar New Year) and xôi đỗ đen, sticky rice with black bean. She used to specialise in only one kind of sticky rice but, as she says, “business was slow so I added other types of sticky rice. I sit here in the morning everyday anyway, so I sell different types, a small quantity for each” (Nga). The biggest complication for street vendors selling sticky rice is the requirement that it is still being steamed just before being sold, so that it is hot, soft, and sticky, and not dried out. The cooked sticky rice is usually packed in banana leaves under a plastic cover and put in a bamboo basket. The basket helps with ventilation while banana leaves keep the rice moist and the plastic cover keeps in heat. Traditionally, xôi is also sold in banana leaves. Nga uses first a layer of banana leaf, then one of plastic, and finally newspaper. Nga is a grandmother and constructs her street vending as a retirement job, which puts food on the table for her husband and herself. In Vietnam, there is a tradition that the younger generations look after their elders, but her work as a street vendor means that Nga and her husband can retain their autonomy and help their own family, for longer. Nga starts cooking at 4.00am, but her street food is only one element of her income: “In addition to selling here, I also deliver to restaurants. Actually most of my income comes from them. I deliver at around 5 to 5.30am, and start selling here at 6” (Nga). Both of Lister and Pohl’s recipes start with soaking the sticky rice overnight in water, just as Nga does. She says, “I wash the rice and soak them before I go to bed the night before. I get up, start the stove which uses black coal. I sell out all the rice everyday, otherwise it won’t taste good […] usually I sell out at 8 or 8.30am, 9am at the latest. I don’t work in the afternoon. I pick up my grandchildren at 4pm and take care of them until the end of the day.” Nga has strong views about the place of recipes in cooking, especially in cooking as a business: I don’t need to learn from a book. Written recipes or informal teaching from relatives is the same, they are just the starting point. What matters is you learn from your own experience. For example, you soak your rice for 6 hours today, but your customers complain that the rice is not soft, so you soak it for 8 hours next time. Or maybe you sell to a poorer community, you will adjust your ingredients to cheaper type, so you can reduce your price but still make profit; but if you sell in a richer neighbourhood, you make sure you have good quality, even with higher price, or else they will not buy from you (Nga). Lister and Pohl dedicate a two-page spread (70-1) to Ðặng Thị Sáu and her Xôi shopfront stall, noting that she learned her business from her mother-in-law who was “an itinerant sticky rice peddler for most of her life, walking the city streets, selling from bamboo baskets. It was a hard and uncertain life and not one Sáu wanted to follow” (70). Sáu’s compromise, ultimately, was to sell sticky rice from the comparative security and stability of a fixed location. Lister and Pohl’s focus upon Sáu and her food, along with the pictures of everyday life featured in Vietnamese Street Food, mean that this is more than an inspirational cookbook. It is a vivid introduction to the vernacular foodways of Vietnam “a set of social, economic and cultural practices around the production and consumption of food that are normatively distinctive to an ethnocultural group” (Jonas 119). Bún Riêu Cua: Crab Meat Noodle Crab meat noodle is a complicated recipe and a reminder that many people who eat street food do so because these are favourite Vietnamese dishes which may require considerable effort to prepare. The specialisation of street food vendors, making a complicated dish for the relish of dozens of customers, allows busy Vietnamese workers to enjoy their authentic cuisine at an affordable cost without the time constraints of buying multiple ingredients and making the dish themselves. The recipe in Hanoi Street Food involves several steps: preparation of the sauce using sautéing, frying and reducing (Jones); cooking of the crab in boiling water (not including separately bought crabmeat used in the sauce); creation of a chicken stock, to which the sauce is added; along with the washing and chopping a range of vegetables including soya bean sprouts, spring onions, lettuce, fresh herbs, lime etc., some of which is used as garnish (Vandenberghe, and Thys 90). Trung and her husband have been selling their bún riêu cua for five years. For nine years prior to working as a street food vendor, Trung was a recyclables collector. She began working in the city when she “followed a cousin to Ha Noi so I could earn money to support my family of six people. At first I collected materials such as plastic bottles, metal, papers, etc, but because I carried too much on my shoulders, I developed severe back pain and shoulder pain” (Trung). Now she and her husband use a bicycle to help carry the various necessities for her bún riêu cua street stall, using the vehicle to reduce some of the physical burden of the work. Trung learned how to make bún riêu cua from an aunt in Hai Phong, “I just observed her and other people”. The dish remains time consuming, however:I get up at 3am to start preparing the crab and cook the soup. My husband washes vegetables. It often takes us about 2 hours. By 5am, we leave the house, and we are here by 5.30, ready to sell breakfast […] I am most busy during lunchtime, from 10am to 1-2pm. Breakfast time can last from 6am to 9am. When I am not selling to customers I often get tired and easily fall asleep because I always crave sleep. In between, my husband and I wash dishes. He also delivers to people too. We get lots of phone calls from patients of the hospitals nearby. They say my food is more delicious than food in the hospital’s canteen […] Usually I go home around 4pm in the summer and 5 to 6pm in the winter. But I also stop by different shops to buy ingredients for the next day on my way home. Once I get home, I wash the bowls, re-supply and re-arrange my stuffs, and do some preparation. I work until I go to bed at 9pm (Trung). The illustration for this recipe in Hanoi Street Food is not of the dish itself, but of young Vietnamese men enjoying the dish. As is the case with Lister and Pohl, Vandenberghe and Thys’s book is about more than recipes, it is a rich evocation of daily life on the streets of Vietnam. Serve with a Side-dish of Conclusions Authentic street food is cooked, sold and consumed on the street. However, street food cookbooks tend to recommended shopfront eateries, partly because they are easier to find, and are more convenient, in that neither the tourist nor the vendor is at risk of police intervention. Another reason for featuring the more established vendors with their own premises concerns food hygiene: In 1989 the Vietnamese government adopted a law on the protection of people’s health. A survey on food samples in Hanoi showed that 47 per cent were microbiologically unsafe. [This has now changed.] The government has adopted two practices for ensuring safer street food, namely, monitoring street food vendors through a licensing system, and educating and training them on hygiene (Bhowmik 2260). Such licensing, training and the maintenance of hygiene standards are more difficult to police with itinerant food vendors. In the two cookbooks featured, ingredients tend to be measured as to specific amounts, with the idea that the result should be predictable. Street vendors, however, learn to cook their signature dishes from friends, relatives, and experience. They do not measure their ingredients while cooking, and their products vary from one vendor to another, and also to some extent from day to day, even given the same cook. This creates a special characteristic of street food and means that regular customers gravitate to particular vendors whose choice of seasoning and cooking techniques culminates in the most attractive results according to their personal taste. While there are lots of stalls captioned as bánh mỳ, regular customers will find that there are significant differences between stalls. One reason for this is offered in Lister and Pohl: small quantities of special ingredients that are difficult to get in Vietnam and impossible elsewhere. The cook in a featured Bánh cuốn stall (selling rice pancakes) adds a drop of giant water bug juice to season her dipping broth: “ ‘It’s the real thing! One drop off the top of a chopstick is enough’ she explains” (Lister, and Pohl 33). As is clear from the interviews with vendors, itinerant sellers of street food don’t use recipe books, and have generally learned how to cook their dishes through women’s networks of family and friends. The two cookbooks discussed are designed for consumption by people who engage in or aspire to “food and drink tourism” (Boniface vii) in Vietnam, whether the readers have visited in person or become aware of the cuisine through popular culture, such as Luke Nguyen’s SBS cooking shows (Nguyen). They are as much coffee table books as collections of recipes, and are written by westerners for a western readership. The recipes focus on ingredients that can be sourced in everyday western contexts but the beautiful and evocative photographs of daily life in Vietnam, supplemented by written commentary on people and place, clearly locate the recipes in their Vietnamese cultural context. Culinary tourism allows people unfamiliar with a cuisine and culture to use “food to explore new cultures and ways of being” (Long 21). Street food vendors are part of many communities. They require knowledge, skill, and personal networks to acquire the quality ingredients at the best possible price for the daily routine of food preparation and selling. Whereas recipe books deal with domestic-scale food production, a vendor may cook for a hundred or more people in a single day. Many itinerant street food sellers work in the city to support absent husbands and children in rural locations, taking money home on a regular basis ($20 profit a fortnight makes their labour worthwhile), and spending 10 days in 14 on the streets (Jensen). As women help each other to begin a career as a vendor through oral teaching, observation, and first-hand experience, they do away with the invisible, authoritative voice of cookbooks. Itinerant food sellers are also a part of the larger communities in which they work, including customers, their suppliers, and other actors such as the authorities and the media. This larger community sets the tone for their food, and their lives. The vast majority of vendors of street food are women, prepared to work hard and with passion and pride to make enough money to make a difference to their families. Books about street food might help recreate some of the dishes that can be bought on the streets of Vietnam. After participating in street life, however, as an observer or customer, it becomes clear that recipe cookbooks intended for English readers only capture part of the complexity and beauty of street food, and the lives of those who make it. References Anh. Personal communication. Trans. Nguyen Hong Van. 2013. Boniface, Priscilla. Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food and Drink. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Bhowmik, Sharit K. “Street Vendors in Asia: A Review.” Economic and Political Weekly (2005): 2256–64. Burr, Vivien. Social Constructionism. 2nd ed. Oxford: Routledge, 2003. Corbin Dwyer, Sonya, and Jennifer L. Buckle. “The Space Between: On Being an Insider-Outsider in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8.1 (2009): 54–63. Fram, Sheila M. “The Constant Comparative Analysis Method Outside of Grounded Theory.” The Qualitative Report 18, Article 1 (2013): 1–25. 28 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR18/fram1.pdf›. Jensen, Rolf. Street Vendors [DVD of three films, Their Voices, Thuy’s Story and Loi’s Story]. Ha Noi: Vietnamese Women’s Museum, 2012. Jonas, Tammi. “Eating the Vernacular, Being Cosmopolitan.” Cultural Studies Review 19.1 (2013): 117–37. 19 May 2013 ‹http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/viewFile/3076/3428›. Jones, G. Stephen. “The Difference between Sautéing, Pan Frying and Stir Frying [blog post].” The Reluctant Gourmet. 30 Apr. 2010. 28 Apr. 2013 ‹http://reluctantgourmet.com/cooking-techniques/frying/item/856-saute-pan-fry-and-stir-fry›. Lincoln, Martha. “Report from the Field: Street Vendors and the Informal Sector in Hanoi.” Dialectical Anthropology 32.3 (2008): 261–5. Lister, Tracey, and Andreas Pohl. Vietnamese Street Food. Rev. ed. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2013. Long, Lucy. “A Folkloristic Perspective on Eating and Otherness.” Culinary Tourism. Ed. Lucy Long. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004. 20–50. Nga. Personal communication. (trans. Nguyen Hong Van), 2013. Nguyen, Luke. Luke Nyugen’s Vietnam [SBS]. 2009 ‹http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/lukenguyen/watchonline/page/i/1/show/lukenguyen›. Trung. Personal communication. Trans. Nguyen Hong Van. 2013. Vandenberghe, Tom, and Luk Thys. Hanoi Street Food: Cooking and Travelling in Vietnam. Tielt: Uitgeverij Lannoo nv, 2011.
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20

Brien, Donna Lee. "Why Foodies Thrive in the Country: Mapping the Influence and Significance of the Rural and Regional Chef." M/C Journal 11, no. 5 (September 8, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.83.

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Abstract:
Introduction The academic area known as food studies—incorporating elements from disciplines including anthropology, folklore, history, sociology, gastronomy, and cultural studies as well as a range of multi-disciplinary approaches—asserts that cooking and eating practices are less a matter of nutrition (maintaining life by absorbing nutrients from food) and more a personal or group expression of various social and/or cultural actions, values or positions. The French philosopher, Michel de Certeau agrees, arguing, moreover, that there is an urgency to name and unpick (what he identifies as) the “minor” practices, the “multifarious and silent reserve of procedures” of everyday life. Such practices are of crucial importance to all of us, as although seemingly ordinary, and even banal, they have the ability to “organise” our lives (48). Within such a context, the following aims to consider the influence and significance of an important (although largely unstudied) professional figure in rural and regional economic life: the country food preparer variously known as the local chef or cook. Such an approach is obviously framed by the concept of “cultural economy”. This term recognises the convergence, and interdependence, of the spheres of the cultural and the economic (see Scott 335, for an influential discussion on how “the cultural geography of space and the economic geography of production are intertwined”). Utilising this concept in relation to chefs and cooks seeks to highlight how the ways these figures organise (to use de Certeau’s term) the social and cultural lives of those in their communities are embedded in economic practices and also how, in turn, their economic contributions are dependent upon social and cultural practices. This initial mapping of the influence and significance of the rural and regional chef in one rural and regional area, therefore, although necessarily different in approach and content, continues the application of such converged conceptualisations of the cultural and economic as Teema Tairu’s discussion of the social, recreational and spiritual importance of food preparation and consumption by the unemployed in Finland, Guy Redden’s exploration of how supermarket products reflect shared values, and a series of analyses of the cultural significance of individual food products, such as Richard White’s study of vegemite. While Australians, both urban and rural, currently enjoy access to an internationally renowned food culture, it is remarkable to consider that it has only been during the years following the Second World War that these sophisticated and now much emulated ways of eating and cooking have developed. It is, indeed, only during the last half century that Australian eating habits have shifted from largely Anglo-Saxon influenced foods and meals that were prepared and eaten in the home, to the consumption of a wider range of more international and sophisticated foods and meals that are, increasingly, prepared by others and eaten outside the consumer’s residence. While a range of commonly cited influences has prompted this relatively recent revolution in culinary practice—including post-war migration, increasing levels of prosperity, widespread international travel, and the forces of globalisation—some of this change owes a debt to a series of influential individual figures. These tastemakers have included food writers and celebrity chefs; with early exponents including Margaret Fulton, Graham Kerr and Charmaine Solomon (see Brien). The findings of this study suggests that many restaurant chefs, and other cooks, have similarly played, and continue to take, a key role in the lives of not only the, necessarily, limited numbers of individuals who dine in a particular eatery or the other chefs and/or cooks trained in that establishment (Ruhlman, Reach), but also the communities in which they work on a much broader scale. Considering Chefs In his groundbreaking study, A History of Cooks and Cooking, Australian food historian Michael Symons proposes that those who prepare food are worthy of serious consideration because “if ‘we are what we eat’, cooks have not just made our meals, but have also made us. They have shaped our social networks, our technologies, arts and religions” (xi). Writing that cooks “deserve to have their stories told often and well,” and that, moreover, there is a “need to invent ways to think about them, and to revise our views about ourselves in their light” (xi), Symons’s is a clarion call to investigate the role and influence of cooks. Charles-Allen Baker-Clark has explicitly begun to address this lacunae in his Profiles from the Kitchen: What Great Cooks Have Taught Us About Ourselves and Our Food (2006), positing not only how these figures have shaped our relationships with food and eating, but also how these relationships impact on identities, culture and a range of social issues including those of social justice, spirituality and environmental sustainability. With the growing public interest in celebrities, it is perhaps not surprising that, while such research on chefs and/or cooks is still in its infancy, most of the existing detailed studies on individuals focus on famed international figures such as Marie-Antoine Carême (Bernier; Kelly), Escoffier (James; Rachleff; Sanger), and Alexis Soyer (Brandon; Morris; Ray). Despite an increasing number of tabloid “tell-all” surveys of contemporary celebrity chefs, which are largely based on mass media sources and which display little concern for historical or biographical accuracy (Bowyer; Hildred and Ewbank; Simpson; Smith), there have been to date only a handful of “serious” researched biographies of contemporary international chefs such as Julia Child, Alice Waters (Reardon; Riley), and Bernard Loiseux (Chelminski)—the last perhaps precipitated by an increased interest in this chef following his suicide after his restaurant lost one of its Michelin stars. Despite a handful of collective biographical studies of Australian chefs from the later-1980s on (Jenkins; O’Donnell and Knox; Brien), there are even fewer sustained biographical studies of Australian chefs or cooks (Clifford-Smith’s 2004 study of “the supermarket chef,” Bernard King, is a notable exception). Throughout such investigations, as well as in other popular food writing in magazines and cookbooks, there is some recognition that influential chefs and cooks have worked, and continue to work, outside such renowned urban culinary centres as Paris, London, New York, and Sydney. The Michelin starred restaurants of rural France, the so-called “gastropubs” of rural Britain and the advent of the “star-chef”-led country bed and breakfast establishment in Australia and New Zealand, together with the proliferation of farmer’s markets and a public desire to consume locally sourced, and ecologically sustainable, produce (Nabhan), has focused fresh attention on what could be called “the rural/regional chef”. However, despite the above, little attention has focused on the Australian non-urban chef/cook outside of the pages of a small number of key food writing magazines such as Australian Gourmet Traveller and Vogue Entertaining + Travel. Setting the Scene with an Australian Country Example: Armidale and Guyra In 2004, the Armidale-Dumaresq Council (of the New England region, New South Wales, Australia) adopted the slogan “Foodies thrive in Armidale” to market its main city for the next three years. With a population of some 20,000, Armidale’s main industry (in economic terms) is actually education and related services, but the latest Tourist Information Centre’s Dining Out in Armidale (c. 2006) brochure lists some 25 restaurants, 9 bistros and brasseries, 19 cafés and 5 fast food outlets featuring Australian, French, Italian, Mediterranean, Chinese, Thai, Indian and “international” cuisines. The local Yellow Pages telephone listings swell the estimation of the total number of food-providing businesses in the city to 60. Alongside the range of cuisines cited above, a large number of these eateries foreground the use of fresh, local foods with such phrases as “local and regional produce,” “fresh locally grown produce,” “the finest New England ingredients” and locally sourced “New England steaks, lamb and fresh seafood” repeatedly utilised in advertising and other promotional material. Some thirty kilometres to the north along the New England highway, the country town of Guyra, proclaimed a town in 1885, is the administrative and retail centre for a shire of some 2,200 people. Situated at 1,325 metres above sea level, the town is one of the highest in Australia with its main industries those of fine wool and lamb, beef cattle, potatoes and tomatoes. Until 1996, Guyra had been home to a large regional abattoir that employed some 400 staff at the height of its productivity, but rationalisation of the meat processing industry closed the facility, together with its associated pet food processor, causing a downturn in employment, local retail business, and real estate values. Since 2004, Guyra’s economy has, however, begun to recover after the town was identified by the Costa Group as the perfect site for glasshouse grown tomatoes. Perfect, due to its rare combination of cool summers (with an average of less than two days per year with temperatures over 30 degrees celsius), high winter light levels and proximity to transport routes. The result: 3.3 million kilograms of truss, vine harvested, hydroponic “Top of the Range” tomatoes currently produced per annum, all year round, in Guyra’s 5-hectare glasshouse: Australia’s largest, opened in December 2005. What residents (of whom I am one) call the “tomato-led recovery” has generated some 60 new local jobs directly related to the business, and significant flow on effects in terms of the demand for local services and retail business. This has led to substantial rates of renovation and building of new residential and retail properties, and a noticeably higher level of trade flowing into the town. Guyra’s main street retail sector is currently burgeoning and stories of its renewal have appeared in the national press. Unlike many similar sized inland towns, there are only a handful of empty shops (and most of these are in the process of being renovated), and new commercial premises have recently been constructed and opened for business. Although a small town, even in Australian country town terms, Guyra now has 10 restaurants, hotel bistros and cafés. A number of these feature local foods, with one pub’s bistro regularly featuring the trout that is farmed just kilometres away. Assessing the Contribution of Local Chefs and Cooks In mid-2007, a pilot survey to begin to explore the contribution of the regional chef in these two close, but quite distinct, rural and regional areas was sent to the chefs/cooks of the 70 food-serving businesses in Armidale and Guyra that I could identify. Taking into account the 6 returns that revealed a business had closed, moved or changed its name, the 42 replies received represented a response rate of 65.5per cent (or two thirds), representatively spread across the two towns. Answers indicated that the businesses comprised 18 restaurants, 13 cafés, 6 bistro/brasseries, 1 roadhouse, 1 takeaway/fast food and 3 bed and breakfast establishments. These businesses employed 394 staff, of whom 102 were chefs and/cooks, or 25.9 per cent of the total number of staff then employed by these establishments. In answer to a series of questions designed to ascertain the roles played by these chefs/cooks in their local communities, as well as more widely, I found a wide range of inputs. These chefs had, for instance, made a considerable contribution to their local economies in the area of fostering local jobs and a work culture: 40 (95 per cent) had worked with/for another local business including but not exclusively food businesses; 30 (71.4 per cent) had provided work experience opportunities for those aspiring to work in the culinary field; and 22 (more than half) had provided at least one apprenticeship position. A large number had brought outside expertise and knowledge with them to these local areas, with 29 (69 per cent) having worked in another food business outside Armidale or Guyra. In terms of community building and sustainability, 10 (or almost a quarter) had assisted or advised the local Council; 20 (or almost half) had worked with local school children in a food-related way; 28 (two thirds) had helped at least one charity or other local fundraising group. An extra 7 (bringing the cumulative total to 83.3 per cent) specifically mentioned that they had worked with/for the local gallery, museum and/or local history group. 23 (more than half) had been involved with and/or contributed to a local festival. The question of whether they had “contributed anything else important, helpful or interesting to the community” elicited the following responses: writing a food or wine column for the local paper (3 respondents), delivering TAFE teacher workshops (2 respondents), holding food demonstrations for Rotary and Lions Clubs and school fetes (5 respondents), informing the public about healthy food (3 respondents), educating the public about environmental issues (2 respondents) and working regularly with Meals on Wheels or a similar organisation (6 respondents, or 14.3 per cent). One respondent added his/her work as a volunteer driver for the local ambulance transport service, the only non-food related response to this question. Interestingly, in line with the activity of well-known celebrity chefs, in addition to the 3 chefs/cooks who had written a food or wine column for the local newspaper, 11 respondents (more than a quarter of the sample) had written or contributed to a cookbook or recipe collection. One of these chefs/cooks, moreover, reported that he/she produced a weblog that was “widely read”, and also contributed to international food-related weblogs and websites. In turn, the responses indicated that the (local) communities—including their governing bodies—also offer some support of these chefs and cooks. Many respondents reported they had been featured in, or interviewed and/or photographed for, a range of media. This media comprised the following: the local newspapers (22 respondents, 52.4 per cent), local radio stations (19 respondents, 45.2 per cent), regional television stations (11 respondents, 26.2 per cent) and local websites (8 respondents, 19 per cent). A number had also attracted other media exposure. This was in the local, regional area, especially through local Council publications (31 respondents, 75 per cent), as well as state-wide (2 respondents, 4.8 per cent) and nationally (6 respondents, 14.3 per cent). Two of these local chefs/cooks (or 4.8 per cent) had attracted international media coverage of their activities. It is clear from the above that, in the small area surveyed, rural and regional chefs/cooks make a considerable contribution to their local communities, with all the chefs/cooks who replied making some, and a number a major, contribution to those communities, well beyond the requirements of their paid positions in the field of food preparation and service. The responses tendered indicate that these chefs and cooks contributed regularly to local public events, institutions and charities (with a high rate of contribution to local festivals, school programs and local charitable activities), and were also making an input into public education programs, local cultural institutions, political and social debates of local importance, as well as the profitability of other local businesses. They were also actively supporting not only the future of the food industry as a whole, but also the viability of their local communities, by providing work experience opportunities and taking on local apprentices for training and mentorship. Much more than merely food providers, as a group, these chefs and cooks were, it appears, also operating as food historians, public intellectuals, teachers, activists and environmentalists. They were, moreover, operating as content producers for local media while, at the same time, acting as media producers and publishers. Conclusion The terms “chef” and “cook” can be diversely defined. All definitions, however, commonly involve a sense of professionalism in food preparation reflecting some specialist knowledge and skill in the culinary arts, as well as various levels of creativity, experience and responsibility. In terms of the specific duties that chefs and professional cooks undertake every day, almost all publications on the subject deal specifically with workplace related activities such as food and other supply ordering, staff management, menu planning and food preparation and serving. This is constant across culinary textbooks (see, for instance, Culinary Institute of America 2002) and more discursive narratives about the professional chef such as the bestselling autobiographical musings of Anthony Bourdain, and Michael Ruhlman’s journalistic/biographical investigations of US chefs (Soul; Reach). An alternative preliminary examination, and categorisation, of the roles these professionals play outside their kitchens reveals, however, a much wider range of community based activities and inputs than such texts suggest. It is without doubt that the chefs and cooks who responded to the survey discussed above have made, and are making, a considerable contribution to their local New England communities. It is also without doubt that these contributions are of considerable value, and valued by, those country communities. Further research will have to consider to what extent these contributions, and the significance and influence of these chefs and cooks in those communities are mirrored, or not, by other country (as well as urban) chefs and cooks, and their communities. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Engaging Histories: Australian Historical Association Regional Conference, at the University of New England, September 2007. I would like to thank the session’s participants for their insightful comments on that presentation. A sincere thank you, too, to the reviewers of this article, whose suggestions assisted my thinking on this piece. Research to complete this article was carried out whilst a Visiting Fellow with the Research School of Humanities, the Australian National University. References Armidale Tourist Information Centre. Dining Out in Armidale [brochure]. Armidale: Armidale-Dumaresq Council, c. 2006. Baker-Clark, C. A. Profiles from the Kitchen: What Great Cooks have Taught us about Ourselves and our Food. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2006. Bernier, G. Antoine Carême 1783-1833: La Sensualité Gourmande en Europe. Paris: Grasset, 1989. Bourdain, A. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001. Bowyer, A. Delia Smith: The Biography. London: André Deutsch, 1999. Brandon, R. The People’s Chef: Alexis Soyer, A Life in Seven Courses. Chichester: Wiley, 2005. Brien, D. L. “Australian Celebrity Chefs 1950-1980: A Preliminary Study.” Australian Folklore 21 (2006): 201–18. Chelminski, R. The Perfectionist: Life and Death In Haute Cuisine. New York: Gotham Books, 2005. Clifford-Smith, S. A Marvellous Party: The Life of Bernard King. Milson’s Point: Random House Australia, 2004. Culinary Institute of America. The Professional Chef. 7th ed. New York: Wiley, 2002. de Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. Hildred, S., and T. Ewbank. Jamie Oliver: The Biography. London: Blake, 2001. Jenkins, S. 21 Great Chefs of Australia: The Coming of Age of Australian Cuisine. East Roseville: Simon and Schuster, 1991. Kelly, I. Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antoine Carême, The First Celebrity Chef. New York: Walker and Company, 2003. James, K. Escoffier: The King of Chefs. London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2002. Morris, H. Portrait of a Chef: The Life of Alexis Soyer, Sometime Chef to the Reform Club. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1938. Nabhan, G. P. Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. O’Donnell, M., and T. Knox. Great Australian Chefs. Melbourne: Bookman Press, 1999. Rachleff, O. S. Escoffier: King of Chefs. New York: Broadway Play Pub., 1983. Ray, E. Alexis Soyer: Cook Extraordinary. Lewes: Southover, 1991. Reardon, J. M. F. K. Fisher, Julia Child, and Alice Waters: Celebrating the Pleasures of the Table. New York: Harmony Books, 1994. Redden, G. “Packaging the Gifts of Nation.” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999) accessed 10 September 2008 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/gifts.php. Riley, N. Appetite For Life: The Biography of Julia Child. New York: Doubleday, 1977. Ruhlman, M. The Soul of a Chef. New York: Viking, 2001. Ruhlman, M. The Reach of a Chef. New York: Viking, 2006. Sanger, M. B. Escoffier: Master Chef. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1976. Scott, A. J. “The Cultural Economy of Cities.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 212 (1997) 323–39. Simpson, N. Gordon Ramsay: The Biography. London: John Blake, 2006. Smith, G. Nigella Lawson: A Biography. London: Andre Deutsch, 2005. Symons, M. A History of Cooks and Cooking. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2004. Tairu, T. “Material Food, Spiritual Quest: When Pleasure Does Not Follow Purchase.” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999) accessed 10 September 2008 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/pleasure.php. White, R. S. “Popular Culture as the Everyday: A Brief Cultural History of Vegemite.” Australian Popular Culture. Ed. I. Craven. Cambridge UP, 1994. 15–21.
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