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University of California Press

About the Book

In recent years, Peru has transformed from a war-torn country to a global high-end culinary destination. Connecting chefs, state agencies, global capital, and Indigenous producers, this “gastronomic revolution” makes powerful claims: food unites Peruvians, dissolves racial antagonisms, and fuels development. Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race critically evaluates these claims and tracks the emergence of Peruvian gastropolitics, a biopolitical and aesthetic set of practices that reinscribe dominant racial and gendered orders. Through critical readings of high-end menus and ethnographic analysis of culinary festivals, guinea pig production, and national-branding campaigns, this work explores the intersections of race, species, and capital to reveal links between gastronomy and violence in Peru.
 

About the Author

María Elena García is Professor in the Comparative History of Ideas Department at the University of Washington.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface: Understories
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Stories of Resurgence and Coloniality

Part One: Structures of Accumulation
Interlude: Hauntings
1 • Gastropolitics and the Nation
Interlude: Eating the Nation
2 • Cooking Ecosystems: The Beautiful Coloniality of Virgilio Martínez
Interlude: "Gastronomy Is a Display Case"
3 • Staging Difference: The Gastropolitics of Inclusion and Recognition

Part Two: Narratives from the Edge
Interlude: "Apega Needs Us to Look Pretty"
4 • Gastropolitics Otherwise: Stories in and of the Vernacular
Interlude: Of Humor and Violence
5 • Guinea Pig Matters: Figuring Race, Sex, and Nation
Interlude: Chemical Castration 
6 • Death of a Guinea Pig

Epilogue. Huacas Rising 

Notes
References
Index

Reviews

"The book presents a stunning and innovative analysis of the politics of Peru’s recent gastronomic boom. . . .[it] is at the forefront of scholarly discussions on the topic and deserves a wide readership among anthropologists and food studies scholars working on food, race, and nationalism in a range of geographic settings."
Gastronomica
"María Elena García offers a powerfully told story of the gastropolitical revolution in Peru, with a critical, intimate approach that departs from the often celebratory reception of the phenomenon. García links the recent branding of Peruvian cuisine to longstanding violence and extraction of the nation’s resources at the expense of indigenous Andean peoples and other earth beings."––Florence E. Babb, author of Women's Place in the Andes: Engaging Decolonial Feminist Anthropology

"An absolutely original account of Peru's gastronomic boom, which involves the supposed uplifting of Indigenous foods and the country's shedding of its violent past. Through a series of gripping accounts—from the genetic modification and slaughter of guinea pigs to the militarism hiding in the kitchens of five-star restaurants—the book draws connections between gastropolitics, violence, and patriarchy from south to north. Grappling with the contradictions between the cultural opening to Native foods and the durability of racial thought, Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race exposes the desires and aesthetics of settler coloniality at the heart of Peru’s new cuisine."––Bret Gustafson, author of Bolivia in the Age of Gas

"Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race is a stunning meditation on how Peru's much-feted Gastronomic Revolution reenacts older histories of settler colonialism and racial capitalism even as it insists that shared love for food can heal violent pasts. García's riveting and deeply moving storytelling, at once intimate and historical in scale, takes us through a culinary world haunted by logics of extraction, accumulation, and devastation. And yet, as García powerfully and persuasively demonstrates, Indigenous refusal of erasure creates alternate possibilities for life and futures even in landscapes marked by violence and death. A truly remarkable book that offers a profound reflection on the relationship between race, species, and capital."––Radhika Govindrajan, author of Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas

Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race offers an altogether timely, innovative, and exquisitely written reflection on the politics and spectral hauntings of Peru’s gastronomic revolution. In writing of race, capital, and violence in the realm of the culinary, María Elena García moves deftly from incisive explorations of the tastes and spectacles of Peru’s contemporary culinary delicacies to insightful analyses of the colonial histories and global politics that inform the stories of Peru.” ––Robert Desjarlais, author of The Blind Man: A Phantasmography

Awards

  • Flora Tristán Prize for Best Book, 2021, Peru Section, Latin American Studies Association