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Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods (paperback)

Author:Lily Kelting
ISBN:9789376547708
Binding:Paperback
Year:2026
Pages:244
Size:16 x 24 cm
Price:INR895.00
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About the Book
A provocative look at how traditional food movements erase culinary pasts.

The rise of “heritage” foods—that is, the reinvention of traditional foods—has enjoyed a high profile thanks to the oft-praised efforts of chefs such as Sean Brock and René Redzepi. But Lily Kelting observes the popularity of heritage foods as something more: a global movement in response to climate catastrophe and the rise of right-wing, populist movements that center a return to the past as part of their ideology.

Weaving ethnography, discourse analysis, critical theory, and sensory, embodied critique, Kelting tracks and critiques the boom of traditional food revival movements in the American South, Denmark, and India. Ultimately, Kelting argues that the heritage culinary professionals wish to revive is equal parts nostalgia and invention: They engage, subvert, and ignore food histories in their creation of new food movements. As Kelting documents our contemporary moment, she shows how the conversations surrounding these new food movements leave out people already keeping their traditions alive. Against Heritage, then, serves as a reparative revaluation of the work of the cooks largely excluded from the contemporary media conversation about heritage revival.

About the Author
Lily Kelting

Lily Kelting is assistant professor of literary and cultural studies at FLAME University in Pune, India.
Editorial Reviews



“Lily Kelting is a rare writer—someone who writes with academic rigor but is also wildly funny. Against Heritage is a quicksilver history of the modern food heritage trend: whip smart, immaculately researched, and constantly interrogating where ‘heritage’ begins to surrender to nostalgia.”
—Jonathan Nunn, coeditor of Vittles and editor of London Feeds Itself
“An urgently erudite, political, and beautifully written study that blends heritage, foodways, and performance in remarkable, alchemical ways. With this landmark debut, Lily Kelting has established herself as a major new voice in cultural studies.”
—Dan Hicks, author of Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting
“A brilliant provocation that reconsiders the value and labor of women and racialized cooks in the heritage food movement.”
—Krishnendu Ray, coeditor of Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia
“A robust and expansive study that combines theoretical analysis with practical interventions.”
—Catarina Passidomo, Washington and Lee University
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