The Life of Cheese

Abstract

The Life of Cheese is an anthropological study of American artisan cheese and the people who make it. Telling the stories of individual cheesemakers, the book explores how craftwork has become a new source of cultural and economic value within American landscapes of production and consumption. Heather Paxson’s innovative study shows how dairy farmers and artisans inhabit a world in which their colleagues and collaborators are, at various times, plants, animals, microorganisms, family members, employees, and customers. Cheese is alive with meaning, but it is also alive with the activity of organisms large and small. Many cheesemakers love the contingency of their craft and marvel at the unpredictability of transforming milk into cheese. That variability is a quality also valued by consumers, though it is what safety regulators fear. As “unfinished” commodities, living products whose qualities are not fully settled, handmade cheeses embody a mix of new and old ideas about taste and value. Artisan cheese thus offers a unique object through which to rethink the politics of food, land, and labor.

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