Book Reviews 45

Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Florence. Carole Counihan. Rout-ledge: New York and London. 2004. 264 pages. ISBN-10: 0415946727, ISBN-13: 978-0415946728.

Thomas M. WilsonBinghamton University, State University of New York

this is an excellent book, which I highly recommend to all anthropologists interested in the social, economic and political roles of food and eating in society, but also to those anthropologists who seek more sophisticated methodological and compositional models to chronicle and understand transformations in modern urban society, particularly those that relate to family and gender. Stu-dents of Italian culture and society will also find much of comparative value here, as will all scholars who wish to examine food and eating practices within historical and contemporary frames of reference. In short, this book will appeal to many anthropologists and other ethnogra-phers and historians, many of whom conduct research far from the tables of Tuscany. Perhaps my praise will not be surprising when one realizes that the author of this book is a pioneer and continuing leader in the anthropology of food, but the majesty of this work derives principally from its fine balance of ethnographic detail, research reflexiv-ity, theoretical provocations, and author empathy and engagement. We readers not only learn a great deal about how to do extended ethnographic research, here based on thirty years research, but also we are shown the value of a method that is not as popular today as it once was: extended life-histories. In this book, the author, Carole Counihan, utilizes food-centered life histories, to provide

a social and economic history of urban Tuscany, as well as a tour de force travelogue of how an anthropologist can enter, remain, and become part of a society, including as a result an examination of all that such membership entails for herself, her family and her friends, both in Italy and elsewhere. In short, this book achieves what has become almost impossible in today’s anthropological publishing market: post-modernists, identity theorists, reflexivolo-gists, social anthropologists, food specialists, gender scholars, urbanists, and Italianists, as a start, will all learn a great deal in the pages of this book. And despite some hesitation along the way, when readers might be forgiven for thinking that Counihan has begun to show some sort of theoretical or methodological bent that is not to their liking, she returns to food and eating, as the prime motif in this ethnography, but also as one of the main threads in the narrative of Florence and its inhabitants over the years. This is the motif that keeps the narrative and the read-ers moving along nicely, and for their trouble Counihan rewards them with finely-tuned social analysis, along with, in an appendix, traditional family recipes, tried and tested over years of research and Tuscan living!

A review of the book’s major and minor themes will give the reader a sampling (a taste!?) of what this book covers, as a history, an ethnographic text, and a travel-ogue through the life-worlds of people, places and food in Tuscany. The first third of the book examines historical forces as they shaped Tuscan food habits and cuisine, and considers ways in which foodways offer a window on other fundamental aspects of Florentine and regional culture. The metaphor which Counihan uses is voice, in that food is the voice of twentieth-century Florence, and by listening to it we can reconstruct tradition and change in

politeness…were sometimes used alongside one another as polemical tools of persuasion” (p.138), the reader might wonder why Knights’ essay lacked such discussions.

Hamish Mathison’s essay, “Robert Hepburn and the Edinburgh Tatler: a study in an early British periodi-cal,” explores Scottish-English news exchange and the values underlying it (p.145). What can we learn about the stylistic adaptations of articles that first appeared in the London Tatler? What do the adaptations tell us about Scottish aims and anxieties around the impending Union (pp.146–148)? Mathison argues that a close reading of these issues reveals the genesis of a popular, indigenous Scottish style that incorporates the best of English literary tradition, aiming towards a British amalgam in which nei-ther is subsumed (pp.156–157). That this was no simple or quick task is clear from Mathison’s analysis; neverthe-

less, a wider focus on contemporary political concerns would have strengthened it.

News Networks in Seventeenth-Century Britain and Europe is a worthwhile introduction to recent research in early modern media. However, despite its title, the collec-tion emphasizes British news networks. Only three out of the nine authors deal with the continent in any detail, and just one considers a continental city—Venice—in depth. In this sense, then, this collection is not as wide-ranging as its title suggests, and would have been improved by a greater variation in topic. In addition, several of the essays, having uncovered important contemporary figures, might have provided more specific cultural contexts and thus deeper analysis. Nevertheless, given those caveats, this volume calls attention to the plethora and interdependency of media in the seventeenth century.

Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, Vol. 10, Issue 2, pp. 45–46. ISSN 1535-5632, online ISSN 1556-5823. © 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. All Rights Reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-5823.2010.00015.x

46 Book Reviews

The Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of EuropeVolume 10 • Number 2 • Fall/Winter 2010

social and cultural customs and institutions. The twenty-three life histories that form the core data of this analysis focus on food practices, experiences and memories, but through this exploration of the joys that food presented and represented to these Florentines, we are also offered a historical and contemporary narrative of the changing role of consumption as a foundation of social life. As Couni-han concludes, these memories and continuing practices of food production and reproduction show us the voice of modernity as it took hold in Florence and began to be transformed as the new millennium approached, as the commodification of food and eating mirrored the com-modification of Italian life.

The majority of the remainder of the book analyzes the ways in which food offers insight into the changing dimen-sions of gender within Tuscan life, but particularly within the family. This is where this book is especially important, for Counihan demonstrates a remarkable and sensitive ethnographic sensibility, gives us strikingly intimate por-traits of families over time, of how they understood and weathered major and minor changes to the fabric of their lives. Her weaving of the threads of family, gender, genera-tions, and social commensality and community are reveal-ing and touching. These portraits also demonstrate how the concerns of a changing anthropology, which today in

my view wishes to be reflexive but is too interested in the importance of the ethnographer in the narration of other’s narrations of selves, can still influence an ethnography based on broad and deep data collection. One in which we really learn something about not only the changing ideas of gender, family, culture and identity, but also about social and cultural institutions, practices and patterns. Counihan shows us how these Florentines lived the transformations from poverty to well-being over the last thirty years, and she also shows us how the material well-being of today has not been accepted uncritically by Florentines who remem-ber and to some degree long for, the food of the past, and what society was like, in years gone by.

The book’s concluding chapter considers how older peo-ple view today’s food and food ways, and how Florentine culture and society have changed over the last decades of the twentieth century. Many of these senior citizens worry about the new abundance of food and other basics and luxuries, about taking so much to do with consumption for granted, and about the loss of desire due to excess. Couni-han summarizes their view of these changes as a movement from the values of poco ma buono, of ‘only a little but make it good,’ to molto, ma buono, of ‘a lot, but it is good.’ This last sentiment sums up my appreciation of this book; there is a lot here to ponder and analyze, and it is good.