This volume examines, among other things, the significance of food-centered activities to gender relations and the construction of gendered identities across cultures. It considers how each gender's relationship to food may facilitate mutual respect or produce gender hierarchy. This relationship is considered through two central questions: How does control of food production, distribution, and consumption contribute to men's and women's power and social position? and How does food symbolically connote maleness and femaleness and establish the social value of men and women? Other issues discussed include men's and women's attitudes towards their bodies and the legitimacy of their appetites.

Millersville University, Millersville, Pennsylvania, USA. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.

Introduction to the Series, Acknowledgments, 1 Introduction-Food and Gender: Identity and Power, 2 Food and Sexual Identity Among the Culina , 3 "Men Are Taro" (They Cannot Be Rice): Political Aspects of Food Choices in Wamira, Papua New Guinea, 4 Hospitality, Women, and the Efficacy of Beer, 5 Feeding Their Faith: Recipe Knowledge Among Thai Buddhist Women, 6 An Anthropological View of Western Women's Prodigious Fasting, 7 Women as Gatekeepers, 8 What Does It Mean To Be Fat, Thin, and Female in the United States?, About the Contributors, Index