Bryant Simon

Jürgen Martschukat

Grounded in the work of Roland Barthes, Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault, this exciting book uses food as a lens to examine agency and the political, economic, social, and cultural power which underlies every choice of food and every act of eating. The book is divided into three parts - National Characters; Anthropological Situations; Health – with each of the eight chapters exploring the power of food as well as the power relationships reflected and refracted through food. Featuring contributions from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars from around the world, the book offers case studies of a diverse range -from German cuisine and ethnicity in San Francisco after the Gold Rush, through Italian cuisine in Japan, to 'ultragreasy bureks' and teenage fast food consumption in Slovenia. By directly engaging with questions of agency and power, the book pushes the field of food studies in new directions. An important read for students and researchers in food studies, food history, anthropology of food, and sociology of food.

Food, Power, and Agency

Geschichte schreiben mit Foucault

Explores the surprising diversity of fathers and fatherhood throughout American history and society The nuclear family has been endlessly praised as the bedrock of American society, even though there has rarely been a time in history when a majority of Americans lived in such families. This book deconstructs the myth of the nuclear family by presenting the rich diversity of family lives in American history from the American Revolution to the twenty-first century. To tell this story, Jürgen Martschukat focuses on fathers and their relations to families and American society. Using biographical close-ups of twelve different characters, each embedded in historical context, American Fatherhood provides a much more realistic picture of how fatherhood has been performed within different kinds of families. Each protagonist covers a crucial period or event in American history, presents a different family constellation, and makes a different argument with regard to how American society is governed through the family.

A History

American Fatherhood

Susanne Krasmann

Moderne Gesellschaften beruhen auf dem Selbstverständnis, Gewalt einzuhegen, zugleich sind das Recht und die Pflicht zur Gewaltanwendung Grundprinzipien moderner Staatlichkeit. Gewalt, Ordnung und Staatlichkeit sind demnach konstitutiv aufeinander bezogen, doch ihr prekäres Verhältnis erscheint zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts umstrittener denn je. Konzepte wie Rettungsfolter, gerechte Kriege, Ausnahme oder Sicherheit verweisen zugleich auf neue Rationalitäten staatlicher Gewalt. Der Band bietet interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf historische Kontinuitäten und Brüche staatlicher Neuordnungen von Gewalt in der Gegenwart. Mit Beiträgen von David Garland, Christian Geulen, Sven Kramer, Susanne Krasmann, Alf Lüdtke, Jürgen Martschukat, Andrew W. Neal, Günter Riederer, Ruth Stanley und Anja Feth, Frank Schumacher, Klaus Weinhauer sowie einen bisher im Deutschen unveröffentlichten Text von Judith Butler.

Staatliche Neuordnungen vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert

Rationalitäten der Gewalt

We live in the age of fitness. Hundreds of thousands of people run marathons and millions go jogging in local parks, work out in gyms, cycle, swim, or practice yoga. The vast majority are not engaged in competitive sport and are not trying to win any medals. They just want to get fit. Why this modern preoccupation with fitness? In this new book, Jürgen Martschukat traces the roots of our modern preoccupation with fitness back to the birth of modern societies in the eighteenth century, showing how the idea of fitness was interwoven with modernity’s emphasis on perpetual optimization and renewal. But it is only in the period since the 1970s, he argues, that the age of fitness truly emerged, as part and parcel of our contemporary neoliberal era. Neoliberalism enjoins individuals to work on themselves, to cultivate themselves in body and mind. Fitness becomes a guiding principle of social life, an era-defining network of discourses and practices that shape individuals’ actions and self-conceptions. The pursuit of fitness becomes a cultural repertoire that is deeply ingrained in our institutions and way of life. This wide-ranging book shows how deeply fitness is inscribed in modern societies, and how important fitness has become to success or failure, recognition or exclusion, in a society that sets great store by self-responsibility, performance, market, and competition. It will be of great value not only to those interested in sport and fitness, but also to anyone concerned with the conditions of success and failure in our societies today.

How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement

The Age of Fitness

Aus einem völlig neuen Blickwinkel präsentiert Jürgen Martschukat die Geschichte der USA. Er schildert zentrale Themen wie die Sklaverei, die Besiedelung des Westens, die Einwanderung aus Europa oder die Große Depression anhand einzelner Familien. Dabei stehen vor allem die Väter im Mittelpunkt. Jedes Kapitel zoomt nah an die Personen heran: an den Sklavenvater, der nur einen Teil seiner Familie freikaufen kann, an das Mädchen, das mit seinem Vater gen Westen aufbricht, oder an den Arbeitslosen, der die Aufgabe des Ernährers an seine Frau abgeben muss. Diese Geschichten fügen sich zu einem historischen Gesamtbild, das Menschen in vielfältigen Lebensentwürfen darstellt. Und doch, so zeigt sich, war das familiäre Ideal vom männlichen Ernährer und der Hausfrau und Mutter stets präsent. So wurde und wird mittels der Familie eine Ordnung des Sozialen hergestellt, an der die Menschen auf unterschiedliche Weise teilhaben - eine Erkenntnis, die den Kern amerikanischer Geschichte und Gegenwart offenlegt.

Jürgen Martschukat

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