The Historical Development of Industrial and Domestic Food Technologies

Th e historical development of industrial and domestic food technologies is partly marked by the promise of modernization, social progress, and an overall better quality of life for (particular sections of ) the population. 1 Th is technological determinism is visible in nineteenth-century reformers and feminist utopians proposing automated food manufacturing and centralized kitchens, and in many of the twentieth-century commercial and marketing claims for purchasing domestic technologies or convenience foods (Belasco 2008). Th e promise of liberating women from diffi cult, time-consuming domestic chores (e.g., preservation, storage, preparation, and cooking) was one such claim. Whether these considerations refl ected real improvements for women has been the subject of much debate driven by feminist technoscience perspectives. Important, the development of these technologies coevolved with the increasing separation between production and consumption. Entering the twentieth century, these two spheres were geographically and technologically distancing from one another through the lengthening and complexity of food chains. And yet, both were connected through the spaces of intermediation when assembling, marketing, and using technologies for preserving, storing, or cooking food at multiple settings (industrial, commercial, institutional, or domestic). Th is chapter depicts the various ways diff erent scholarship strands and methodological approaches have explained and examined industrial and domestic food technologies. It looks at U.S. and European research and also at developments elsewhere. Th e text follows a science and technology studies (STS) orientation, a perspective that stands against technological determinism and underscores the social and cultural embeddedness of technological artifacts. Having assessed the emergence of research in this broad fi eld, the second and third parts of the chapter present the main tenets of the STS