Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation
By Emily J. H. Contois(editor), Zenia Kish(editor)
I received a free copy of Food Instagram from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.
Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish edit contributions that explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points as diverse as Hong Kong’s camera-centric foodie culture, the platform’s long history with feminist eateries, and the photography of Australia’s livestock producers. What emerges is a portrait of an arena where people do more than build identities and influence. Users negotiate cultural, social, and economic practices in a place that, for all its democratic potential, reinforces entrenched dynamics of power. Interdisciplinary in approach and transnational in scope, Food Instagram offers general readers and experts alike new perspectives on an important social media space and its impact on a fundamental area of our lives.
Contributors: Laurence Allard, Joceline Andersen, Emily Buddle, Robin Caldwell, Emily J. H. Contois, Sarah E. Cramer, Gaby David, Deborah A. Harris, KC Hysmith, Alex Ketchum, Katherine Kirkwood, Zenia Kish, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonathan Leer, Yue-Chiu Bonni Leung, Yi-Chieh Jessica Lin, Michael Z. Newman, Tsugumi Okabe, Rachel Phillips, Sarah Garcia Santamaria, Tara J. Schuwerk, Sarah E. Tracy, Emily Truman, Dawn Woolley, and Zara Worth
Summary from Goodreads.
I ended up skimming this entire book. I went in expecting something very different that what was presented. I expected an explanation of how food instagram started, and how it evolved to how it is now, the highly perfected photos and the careers that have spawned from it. Instead this is a collection of essays that felt like a college assignment for a course. It may have been more than this but I had such a hard time reading this that the only ‘chapter’ that I actually ended up reading was around Marion Grasby and her mother Noi, a Youtube chef who I actually follow and regularly use her recipes.
Not what I expected, and unless you want to read a collection of essays I would not recommend.
1/5
Have you read Food Instagram? What did you think? Let me know in the comments.
Check it out on Goodreads here.
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