Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What to Do About It

Based on extensive interviews and field research in the homes and kitchens of a diverse group of American families, Pressure Cooker by Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliot challenges the logic of the most popular foodie mantras of our time, showing how they miss the mark and up the ante for parents and children. Romantic images of family meals are inviting, but they create a fiction that does little to fix the problems in the food system. The unforgettable stories in this book evocatively illustrate how class inequality, racism, sexism, and xenophobia converge at the dinner table. If we want a food system that is fair, equitable, and nourishing, we must look outside the kitchen for answers.

This event is cosponsored by the Department of Sociology; the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies; the Healthy Food, Healthy Lives Institute; the Obesity Prevention Center; the Program in Health Disparities Research; the “Thinking Food” Imagine Chair; and the Interdisciplinary Collaboration Workshop on Feminist Food Studies.

Sarah Bowen is Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on food systems, local and global institutions, and inequality. She is the author of Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production.

Joslyn Brenton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ithaca College. She teaches and conducts research about families, food, health, and inequality. Her research has been published in Social Problems, Sociology of Health & Illness, and Contexts.

Sinikka Elliott is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research examines family dynamics, intersecting inequalities, and social policy. She is the author of Not My Kid: What Parents Believe about the Sex Lives of Their Teenagers.