SWEET · The sweetest gender: feminine subjectivities and the gendering of sweets in Barcelona (1650-1800)
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-09-01 → 2022-08-31
- EU contribution
- €212,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The sweetest gender: feminine subjectivities and the gendering of sweets in Barcelona (1650-1800)
The project examined the cultural associations between sweetness, sweet food and femininity in early modern Spain, as well as the role of women in the production of sweets and trade, with a particular focus on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Barcelona. To date, scholarship has mainly focussed on the sugar plantation system and the Atlantic slave trade, foregrounding how sugar was connected to social status and race in the early modern world. However, the gender dimension of sugar has been comparatively underexplored. This study explored the complex ways in which women were associated with sweetness in early modern Spain. It also investigated how women appropriated, negotiated and developed new cultural meanings and uses of sugary food in the period of growing consumption of sugar and enslavement. This project traced the stories of women of various social backgrounds —from elite housewives and tradeswomen to street sellers and nuns— who shaped the flourishing sweets market in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Barcelona. Overall, this project uncovered the complexities between cultural representations and women’s lived experiences. As this study has shown, when symbolic ‘sweet femininities’ prevailed in popular imagery, women actively participated in the confectionery trade despite the limits prescribed by social and institutional norms. By re-centring the research focus on the role of women and using local-level analysis, this project has opened new insights into the cultural meanings of sugar in an era of emerging globalisation, capitalism and empire.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Held assumptions about an inherent female sweet tooth are long-standing, shaping beliefs, attitudes and eating habits from the early modern era to the present day. This research project investigates the process of feminization of sweet taste as well as feminine subjectivities in the making and eating sweets in Barcelona between 1650 and 1800, a crucial period of globalization and popularization of sugar consumption. By addressing the connection between sweets and female nature, this study aims to examine how cultural meanings of sweet food emerged and evolved in the period when sugar was becoming a mass-consumption commodity in Europe. Firstly, this study explores how the changing culinary tastes and the diffusion of new medical knowledge affected the ways of thinking about ‘sweet food’ as well as the social and economic aspects of the sugar trade. Secondly, it examines the agency of women in the manufacture of sweets in private and public spheres, challenging the guild of confectioners in the city. Finally, it looks at refrescos as specific patterns of consumption of sweets and sociability in which women played a crucial role as civilizing agents in the Spanish Enlightenment. This study is based on a large set of underexplored textual, visual and material sources, making use of the rich cultural heritage preserved in Barcelona. By examining the social, intellectual and economic agency of women, this research seeks to move beyond historiographical narratives dominated by men as central actors in the global history of sugar. This research will change the main focus of the recent scholarly away from the courtly circles and Atlantic colonial trade to a Mediterranean and non-courtly urban contexts, which is underrepresented in the field of the substantial historiography on sugar. Overall, it will provide an original reading of the Spanish Enlightenment and further their incorporation into the current debates on the Global Enlightenment.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE · CAMBRIDGECoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/891543
- https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/project/sweetest-gender-feminine-subjectivities-and-gendering-sweets-barcelona-1650-1800
Data: CORDIS, © European Union