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In
Meals Matter, Michael Symons returns economics to its roots in the distribution of food and the labor required. Setting the table with vivid descriptions of conviviality, he offers a gastronomic rebuttal to the narrow worldview of mainstream economics.
List of contents
Prologue: Meals Before Money
1. It’s Not “the Economy, Stupid,” but More Than Five of Them
Part I: Insatiable Greed vs. Satiable Appetite
2. In Greed They Trust
3. Brillat-Savarin’s Quest for Table-Pleasure
Part II: Liberal Economics
4. Epicurus and the Pleasure of the Stomach
5. Cavendish, Hobbes, Locke, and Liberal Political Economy
6. The City Sacks Versailles
7. Making the Market
Part III: The Capture
8. The Dismal Science
9. Ludwig von Mises, Neoliberal Godfather
10. Rationalization and Corporate Purpose
11. The Creation of Homo Economicus
Part IV: Restoring Economics
12. Free the Market! (It’s Been Captured by Capitalism)
13. Value Families! (Economics Begins at Home)
14. Get Political! (Bring Back Banquets)
Epilogue: “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry”
Acknowledgments
Glossary: List of Ingredients
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Michael Symons (P.h.D., Flinders University of South Australia) is a journalist, former restauranteur and independent scholar. He has written One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia (Duck Press, 1982, Penguin, 1984) and The Pudding that Took a Thousand Cooks (Viking Australia, 1998). He has also published articles in Food & Foodways; Food, Culture and Society; and Journal of Historical Sociology.
Summary
In Meals Matter, Michael Symons returns economics to its roots in the distribution of food and the labor required. Setting the table with vivid descriptions of conviviality, he offers a gastronomic rebuttal to the narrow worldview of mainstream economics.
Additional text
Meals Matter is a passionate and inspiring proposal for change. Symons’s suggestion that the 'festal core' of democracy needs to be resurrected is certainly correct.
