Cooking Culture: Women's Culinary Agency and Everyday Creativity in Rural Mali

by Stephen Wooten

Overview

In this open access book, Stephen Wooten offers a holistic historical ethnography of cooking and female agency in West Africa, and of the broader cultural and historical significance of women's culinary agency.

Drawing on archaeological evidence, historical accounts, and extensive ethnographic research, Stephen Wooten documents and theorizes Malian women's culinary agency. He finds that their cooking not only transforms raw ingredients into cooked fare, providing essential physical nourishment, but also helps foster fundamental values, facilitate elemental family and community dynamics, and reproduce gender identities and relations. These findings shed light on the cultural productivity of cooking within a specific African context and foster a deeper appreciation for the significance of culinary dynamics more broadly. The study makes important contributions to the fields of African studies, anthropology, and “everyday studies”.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350382497
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/30/2026
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stephen Wooten is a professor in the Department of Global Studies at the University of Oregon, USA, a member of its African Studies Program, and Founding Director of its Food Studies Program. A recipient of three Fulbright awards, he has published widely across edited collections and leading journals; he is an editorial board member of the journal Food, Culture & Society; he has edited Wari Matters (2006); and he has published The Art of Livelihood (2009). His research covers food and culture worldwide, with a special focus on Africa.

Table of Contents

Introduction Cooking Culture: Appreciating Everyday Creativity
1 Cooking: A “Focus” for Ethnographic and Theoretical Exploration
2 The Mande World: A Deeply Rooted and Living Agri-Culture
3 Making Meals, Nourishing People
4 More than Meals: The Cultural Products of Cooking
5 Cooking Matters: Learning from the Cooks of Rural Mali
References

Editorial Reviews

Stephen Wooten's Cooking Culture correctly describes Mande food as a domain of women's agency and Mande cuisine as one of Africa's significant contributions to global material culture that is both local and diasporic. This book advocates for the authenticity of women's voices as historical and contemporaneous statements on life as lived across both time and place.” —James C. McCann, Professor Emeritus of History and African Studies, Boston University, Author of Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine

“This book demolishes a number of ill-informed stereotypes about cooking and cuisine in Africa, by focusing on the Mande in present day Mali. By implication, it makes us rethink culinary cultures everywhere. It shows that hunger does not exhaust the rich relationship between food and precarity. Men are not the best cooks anywhere. Cooking is a subtle practice of care-giving, with deep cognitive and aesthetic resonance. And smallholder farming and market gardening feeds the world.

It makes a focussed case for thinking through the Mande material – from the plateau and the linguistic region – rather than over-generalizing in terms of “Africa” and “the Atlantic”.

It is arguably the most important book I have read in Food Studies in a generation. It will be in my required readings for a number of courses.” —Krishnendu Ray, Professor of Food Studies, New York University (NYU), Author of The Migrant's Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households and The Ethnic Restaurateur

“A rich, historically contextualized ethnography of the centrality of women's cooking in Mande society and lifeways. Cooking Culture offers an important contribution not only to the growing interest in the neglected practice of cooking in diverse contexts, but to studies of everyday life, technology, and women's agency as well. Cooking Culture furthermore provides a convincing portrayal of how “meals help produce the key values that animate culture and society: the culture of commensality, the culture of the eating circle,
and the culture of gendered action and space.” —David Sutton, Southern Illinois University, author of Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, With Greek Examples

“Cooking Culture is a masterpiece. A major contribution to food studies on the least studied continent when it comes to global knowledge of social and cultural issues surrounding food production, processing, and symbolism. Wooten uses his deep knowledge of and cultural fluency with the Mande world to unpack the complex nature of the powerful yet underappreciated space of cooking. He documents women's creative agency in literal and figurative senses. His work succeeds in showing just how many social and cultural phenomena emerge from women's day to day culinary activities. This well researched and clearly written work opens new perspectives in a neglected area in African studies and is a refreshing complement to research on food and culture across the world.” —Kassim Kone, Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Cortland and Past President of the Mande Studies Association.

““Cooking Culture” compelled me from the first pages of its preface. Drawing on his own extensive research in a Malian community, Wooten shows the creativity of rural women cooking everyday meals in ways that both reveal food studies' near-complete neglect of women's cooking practices on the entire continent and make clear their importance. He connects the neglect of food in general, and cooking in particular, to the marginalization of women and women's work, and to a profound lack of interest (in cultures across the globe) in the activities that “keep body and soul together.” His work reveals, and begins the work of remedying, the multi-layered neglect to which (Malian) women's cooking work has been subjected. The study makes a vital contribution to the scholarship of the everyday and does so in a welcome (and rare) approachable style.” —Lisa Heldke, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Nobel Conference, Gustavus Adolphus College.

“Stephen Wooten brings us a unique ethnographic account of women's work and creativity in kitchenspace, drawing on his experiences and insights as a “women's slave” in rural Mali. His commitment to centering women's priorities, practices, and everyday life is palpable throughout. This book is a contribution to many areas including gender and food studies. It stands out for its vibrant presentation of African foodways from a specific region in a continent too often depicted as lacking and thus is a welcome read for all interested in its rich culture and history. ” —Maria Elisa Christie, Director, Women and Gender in International Development Center for International Research, Education and Development (CIRED)

“A unique, long term perspective on the powerful and transformational role of women in West African culture, economic production, and social replication. Wooten's study addresses holes in the scholarship on both the act and meaning of cooking and its significance in West African history, cultural conception, and continuity. Cooking Culture is a wonderful extension of the research on food and cooking in West Africa and represents a major interdisciplinary accomplishment.” —Brandi Simpson Miller, Wesleyan College, USA

“Cooking Culture is a thoughtful study of women cooks in Mali and a powerful argument for the centrality of their art, labors, and food in the making of everyday life. It is an excellent introduction to the study of the Mande world and the import of foodways for understanding diverse global cultures.” —Laura Ann Twagira, Wesleyan University, USA

From the Publisher