Peer-reviewed
BOY SCOUTS AND THE MANLY ART OF COOKING
Since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has socialized tens of millions of boys in what it means to be masculine, but a paradoxical aspect of this gender socialization has been the instruction of boys (ages 11 through 17) in cooking and serving meals to others and cleaning up the mess. This article examines Boy Scout handbooks, pamphlets, commercial publications, the material culture of campout cookery, photographic evidence, and ethnographic fieldwork with a troop of Boy Scouts in California, to discover how the Boy Scout experience manages to teach boys an ethic of caring for others while, at the same time, still constructing that caring as masculine and not feminine.
Article, 2005
Food and Foodways, 13, 20050309, 67
2005