Cooking Culture

Stephen Wooten is an associate professor in the Department of Global Studies at the University of Oregon, a member of the UO Center for African Studies, and Director of the UO Food Studies Program. A recipient of three Fulbright awards, he has published widely across edited collections and leading journals; he is an editorial board member of the journal Food, Culture & Society; and he has published one monograph, The Art of Livelihood: Creating Expressive Agri-Culture in Rural Mali (2009). His research covers food and culture worldwide, but with a special focus on Africa.

• Introduction Cooking Culture: Appreciating Everyday Creativity 1 Cooking: A “Focus” for Ethnographic and Theoretical Exploration 2 The Mande World: A Deeply Rooted and Living Agri-Culture 3 Making Meals, Nourishing People 4 More than Meals: The Cultural Products of Cooking 5 Cooking Matters: Learning from the Cooks of Rural Mali References

Stephen Wooten’s Cooking Culture correctly describes Mande food as a domain of women’s agency and Mande cuisine as one of Africa’s significant contributions to global material culture that is both local and diasporic. This book advocates for the authenticity of women’s voices as historical and contemporaneous statements on life as lived across both time and place.