A lecture by Rick Fantasia exploring the cultural field of French gastronomy, to assess the social and economic effects of US cultural influence, focusing on three intersections in recent history: the introduction of US fast food into the French cultural space; the logic of the process by which traditional French cuisine has been transformed by this introduction; and how this logic has been extended into the farthest reaches of the French cultural imagination.

Rick Fantasia is the Barbara Richmond 1940 Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. His research has been driven by questions of labor and of culture, and their interpenetration, both in the U.S. and in France. He writes periodically for Le Monde Diplomatique and is the author of Cultures of Solidarity and co-author (with Kim Voss) of Hard Work. His recent research has concerned the symbolic economy of French gastronomy and the dynamics of its transformation as a cultural field.