Many Mouths - The Politics of Food in Britain From Workhouse to Welfare State

A compelling study of two centuries of British government food programs and the cultural, political and economic factors that shaped them.

List of contents

Introduction. The politics of pickles; 1. Old English fare: festive meals, the new Poor Law, and the boundaries of the nation; 2. Gendered portions and racialized rations: the classification of difference in British and colonial prisons; 3. Famine, cooked food, and the starving child: rethinking political economy in colonial India; 4. Tommy's tummy: provisioning POWs during the first world war; 5. The science of selection: malnutrition and school meals in the interwar years; 6. Every sort and condition of citizen: British restaurants and the communal feeding experiment during the second world war; 7. Nations out of nurseries, empires into bottles: the colonial politics of welfare orange juice; Conclusion. How the sausage gets made.

About the author

Nadja Durbach is a historian of Modern Britain at the University of Utah, where her work focuses on the History of the Body, particularly in relationship to the modern state. Her research interests include anti-vaccinationism in the nineteenth century, the Victorian and Edwardian freak show, and the history of state-feeding. Nadja has received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the American Philosophical Society. She is also the author of Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853–1907 (2005) and Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture (2010).

Summary

This compelling study of two centuries of British government food programs explores the political, economic and cultural factors behind them, challenging assumptions that they were progressive and based primarily on scientific advances in nutrition, and asks why the State chose to feed some of its subjects, but not others.

Product details

• Authors: Nadja Durbach, Nadja (University of Utah) Durbach, Durbach Nadja
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2020
• EAN: 9781108483834
• ISBN: 978-1-108-48383-4
• No. of pages: 440
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Vereinigtes Königreich, Großbritannien, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, SOCIAL SCIENCE / General, European History, 20th Century, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain, History - General History, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, c 1500 onwards to present day, British & Irish history, Food & society, United Kingdom, Great Britain, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, Cultural studies: food and society