- 300 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
The pursuit of balance pervades everyday life in rural YucatĂĄn, Mexico, from the delicate negotiations between a farmer and the neighbor who wants to buy his beans to the careful addition of sour orange juice to a rich plate of eggs fried in lard. Based on intensive fieldwork in one indigenous Yucatecan community, Predictable Pleasures explores the desire for balance in this region and the many ways it manifests in human interactions with food. As shifting social conditions, especially a decline in agriculture and a deepening reliance on regional tourism, transform the manners in which people work and eat, residents of this community grapple with new ways of surviving and finding pleasure. Lauren A. Wynne examines the convergence of food and balance through deep analysis of what locals describe as acts of care. Drawing together rich ethnographic data on how people produce, exchange, consume, and talk about food, this book posits food as an accessible, pleasurable, and deeply important means by which people in rural YucatĂĄn make clear what matters to them, finding balance in a world that seems increasingly imbalanced. Unlike many studies of globalization that point to the dissolution of local social bonds and practices, Predictable Pleasures presents an array of enduring values and practices, tracing their longevity to the material constraints of life in rural YucatĂĄn, the deep historical and cosmological significance of food in this region, and the stubborn nature of bodily habits and tastes.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. The Force with Which We Live
- 2. Giving Life to Ourselves
- 3. If It Tastes Good
- 4. So That We Wonât Die
- 5. Put a Little Salt
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
- About Lauren A. Wynne
- Series List
- Bison Books Editions