Meanings of Maple

An Ethnography of Sugaring (Food and Foodways)

By: Michael Lange

Narrated by: John Harrison Gass

In Meanings of Maple, Michael A. Lange provides a cultural analysis of maple syrup making, known in Vermont as sugaring, to illustrate how maple syrup as both process and product is an aspect of cultural identity.

Listeners will go deep into a Vermont sugar bush and its web of plastic tubes, mainline valves, and collection tanks. They will visit sugarhouses crammed with gas evaporators and reverse-osmosis machines. And they will witness encounters between sugar makers and the tourists eager to invest Vermont with mythological fantasies of rural simplicity.

So much more than a commodity study, Meanings of Maple frames a new approach for evaluating the broader implications of iconic foodways, and it will animate conversations in food studies for years to come.

The book is published by The University of Arkansas Press.

©2017 The University of Arkansas Pres (P)2021 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Read it and you’ll never buy Aunt Jemima brand again!" (Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home)

"Foodies, foresters, and knowledge-hungry folks will want to eat up every page." (James P. Leary, author of Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatchers in the Lumberjack Era)

"Thoughtful, engrossing text.... A fine addition to any academic institution that has programs in food science or cultural anthropology. Highly recommended." (Choice)