IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB941685489

The olive and imaginaries of the Mediterranean (2020)

Meneley, Anne (Author)

History and Anthropology
Volume: 31
Issue: 1
Pages: 66-83
Publication date: 2020

DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2019.1687464

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2019.1687464

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Agriculture Cooking and cuisine Nutrition; dietetics Food and foods Fats; oils; lipids 21st century 20th century, late Mediterranean region

This paper explores how the olive tree and olive oil continue to seep into imaginaries of the Mediterranean. The olive tree, long lived and durable, requires human intervention to be productive: it is emblematic of the Mediterranean region and the longstanding human habitation of it. Long central to the religious imaginaries and practices of the monotheistic tradition and those which preceded it, olive oil has emerged, in recent decades, as the star of The Mediterranean Diet. This paper, inspired by anthropologists who follow the ‘thing’, also follows the advocates, both scientists and chefs, who tout the scientific research which underpins The Mediterranean Diet’s claims, which critics might consider part of contemporary ideologies of ‘healthism’ and ‘nutritionism’. Nonetheless, as I analyze, this diet with its olive oil star, and the forms of sociality which are imagined to be part of it continue to affect the circulations of olive oil, culinary practices, and people from and to the Mediterranean region.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB941685489

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Andrea Borghini; Nicola Piras; Beatrice Serini; (2020)
A gradient framework for wild foods (/p/isis/citation/CBB428341573/)

Book Guy Crosby Ph.D; (2019)
Cook, Taste, Learn: How the Evolution of Science Transformed the Art of Cooking (/p/isis/citation/CBB401051280/)

Book Ton van Helvoort; Eric Berkers; Mila Davids; (2017)
Gesmeerde kennis: een halve eeuw geschiedenis van Unilevers Becel (/p/isis/citation/CBB766154976/)

Article Rudy, Kathy; (2012)
Locavores, Feminism, and the Question of Meat (/p/isis/citation/CBB001202115/)

Article Anita Guerrini; (2020)
A Natural History of the Kitchen (/p/isis/citation/CBB901631997/)

Book Zofia Rzeźnicka; Maciej Kokoszko; (2021)
Milk and Dairy Products in the Medicine and Culinary Art of Antiquity and Early Byzantium (1st–7th Centuries AD) (/p/isis/citation/CBB843150469/)

Book Roy, Parama; (2010)
Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201388/)

Book Alison K. Smith; (2021)
Cabbage and Caviar: A History of Food in Russia (/p/isis/citation/CBB557431009/)

Chapter Elizabeth Spiller; (2016)
Recipes for Knowledge: Maker’s Knowledge Traditions, Paracelsian Recipes, and the Invention of the Cookbook, 1600–1660 (/p/isis/citation/CBB783019144/)

Book Mary C. Neuburger; (2022)
Ingredients of Change: The History and Culture of Food in Modern Bulgaria (/p/isis/citation/CBB858226528/)

Book Henry Notaker; (2022)
A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page over Seven Centuries (/p/isis/citation/CBB887907886/)

Book Veit, Helen Zoe; (2013)
Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201323/)

Book Charmaine O'Brien; (2016)
The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788-1901 (/p/isis/citation/CBB391005155/)

Chapter Ken Albala; (2016)
Cooking as Research Methodology: Experiments in Renaissance Cuisine (/p/isis/citation/CBB259455906/)

Thesis McGrath, Maria; (2005)
Food for Dissent: A History of Natural Foods and Dietary Health Politics and Culture since the 1960s (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561687/)

Article Fernando Collantes; (2019)
Why did the industrial diet triumph? The massification of dairy consumption in Spain, 1965–90 (/p/isis/citation/CBB245733911/)

Article Juan Infante-Amate; Brandon Luedtke; Joshua MacFadyen; Jonathan Robins; Kate Stevens; (2019)
Fats of the Land: New Histories of Agricultural Oils (/p/isis/citation/CBB802248709/)

Book Rae Katherine Eighmey; (2010)
Food Will Win the War: Minnesota Crops, Cooks, and Conservation During World War I (/p/isis/citation/CBB147993848/)

Article La Berge, Ann F.; (2008)
How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America (/p/isis/citation/CBB000774475/)

Thesis Amanda Guarino Moraes; (2019)
Treating Hunger: Medical Expertise, Nutritional Science, and the Development of Technical Food Solutions (/p/isis/citation/CBB412048543/)