Books:
Alcohol in Popular Culture (Greenwood/ABC Clio Press, forthcoming Winter 2010)
I am the editor of this A-Z encyclopedia, which takes a wide-ranging pop culture look at the topic of Alcohol in American life. The consumption of alcohol in not glamorized, but instead put it in its cultural context. This work looks primarily at the consumption of alcohol in contemporary American society, but also considers the wider historical and international associations when appropriate. There are books that look at the historical aspects of drink but there are no reference works that also take into consideration the contemporary and popular culture of alcohol and which bring together both the production and consumption of alcohol.
This book will serve as a reference to students and educators studying the culture of alcohol and issues surrounding its consumption in North America. It will be an excellent resource for courses and programs that deal with health, addiction prevention and responsible alcohol consumption. Seeing alcohol within a cultural framework will promote a better understanding of issues surrounding its consumption in the United States in the past and present.
Click here to pre-order on Amazon.
Porta Palazzo: Food, community and place at the market
(under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press)
Why do open-air markets still exist in modern European cities? How have these age-old urban institutions survived in the face of modernization and what are their economic and social functions in the age of the hypermarket and shopping mall? Anthropologists have studied open-air markets in the past; however, these institutions deserve renewed attention in the face of drastic changes in food provisioning and eating habits. In addition, markets should be studied as important places of sociability in cities where public spaces are increasingly deserted and inhospitable. This ethnographic study of the Porta Palazzo market in Turin, Italy investigates the way in which identities and social relations are negotiated through the everyday activities of the market. This book reconsiders the importance of the market as a field for ethnographic study.
Current Research:
Slow Wine
If we can have Slow Food, why can’t we have Slow Wine? Why should drinking wine not be an act that connects consumers with producers and supports sustainable agriculture? This new research looks at consumer perceptions of wine and new ways of communicating the production and agriculture methods involved in wine making.
An initial paper was presented at the Association for Applied Anthropology meeting in Santa Fe in March 2009 and I hope to continue fieldwork in 2011.
Past research:
Urban agriculture in Vancouver, Canada: Growing communities and educating taste
Growing food and planting gardens in the city can be a political act. This ethnographic project looks at the way in which gardeners transform and give meaning to public spaces.
Finding a place at the table: A contemporary history of bottled mineral water in Italy
Doctors have been prescribing mineral water as a cure for numerous ailments from indigestion to typhoid for centuries. However, it was not until the turn of the twentieth century that bottled mineral water became big business. The case of the San Gemini springs in Umbria, Italy offers a glimpse at the rise of mineral water bottling and the changing medical discourse used to market this product as an everyday essential.
read more: “Acqua minerale di Sangemini: Italian mineral water finds a place at the table” Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Vol. 14(2)2009: 184-198.
Going to market: Places of sociability in Lyon and Turin
Carried out over a period of three years, this comparative study looks at the social and cultural roles of the Croix-Rousse market in Lyon, France and the Porta Palazzo market in Turin, Italy. Open-air markets may not be the central food distribution institutions they once were; however, markets are essential to urban sociability, local culinary culture and identity.
