Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places
Wilk Richard
Rice and Beans is a book about the paradox of local and global. On the one hand, this is a globe-spanning dish, a simple source of complete nutrition for billions of people in hundreds of countries. On the other hand, in every place people insist that rice and beans is a local invention, deeply rooted in a particular history and culture. How can something so universal also be so particular?
The authors of this book explore the specific history of the versions of rice and beans beloved and indigenous in cultures from Brazil to West Africa. But they also plumb the shared African, Native American and European trans-Atlantic encounters and exchanges, and the contemporary forces of globalization and nation-building, which combine to make rice and beans a powerful substance and symbol of the relationship between food and culture.
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Reviews for Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places
Jane Fajans, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University
This book fills a gap in the food literature by focusing upon a dish which is widely found in the Americas. The authors use historical, economic and cultural explanations to analyse not only the reasons for ubiquity of this dish, but also its regional variations and links with ethnicity, class and nation-state.
Pat Caplan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London
This is an academically-focussed collection of essays looking at various aspects of rice and beans, a meal that is very popular in a broad area encompassing Western Africa, the Caribbean and North, South and Central America. Various theories are espoused as to how two simple staple items could be unique in their own right yet combined into a “different” dish shared by many countries, such as a common history, links to slavery and other trades... You won’t get a lot of recipes or be a better cook, but you will be more informed and knowledgeable after reading it.
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