Celebrity chef humanitarianism and the possibility of a “giftless” future for the New Orleans foodscape [Book review

Abstract

First paragraph: A searing and classic anthropological question about the meaning of a “gift” undergirds Jeanne K. Firth’s fantastic ethnography, Feeding New Orleans: Celebrity Chefs and Reimagining Food Justice: “Does a gift require inequality or unequal power relations?” (pp. 21, 169). Firth joins a vibrant scholarly conversation that goes back to the 1925 release of Marcel Mauss’s The Gift. She traces how anthropologists, feminist scholars, philoso­phers, and critical theorist have developed theory around gift giving and exchange for decades, and then applies and builds on that theory in a unique ethnographic setting: charities run by celebrity chef philanthropists in New Orleans. She interprets her fieldnotes from charity events and her interviews with scholarship recipients and donors using this theory, illuminating how chef philanthropy has played an integral role in shaping “post–Hurricane Katrina” New Orleans. Firth reveals the way rac­ism, classism, and sexism inform celebrity chef foundations. That said, the book does not only decry how inequality seeps into and is reproduced by chef foundations; it also explores how actors across the system both resist and reinforce these dynamics. Additionally, it explores how a focus on the land instead of individualized “heroes,” social movements instead of corporations, and even cooks instead of chefs can create more space and opportunities for justice and liberation. . . .