This popular text, now in a third edition, offers readers a vivid perspective on the cultural and social complexities of food practices and the current food system. Synthesizing insights from the multidisciplinary field of food studies, this book engages readers’ curiosity by highlighting the seeming paradoxes of food: how food is both individual and social, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary era, seems to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular.
Each chapter begins with an intriguing case study and ends with suggested resources and activities. Chapter topics include identity, restaurants and food media, health, marketing, industrialization, global food, surplus and scarcity, and social change. Updates and enhancements in this edition reflect new scholarly insights into how food is involved in social media, social movements, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout, the book blends concepts and empirical accounts to address the central issues of culture, structure, and social inequality.
Written in a lively, accessible style, this book provides students with an unrivalled and multifaceted introduction to this fascinating aspect of social life.
Table of Contents
1 Principles and Paradoxes in the Study of Food2 Food and Identity: Fitting In and Standing Out
3 Food as Spectacle: The Hard Work of Leisure
4 Nutrition and Health: Good to Eat, Hard to Stomach
5 Branding and Marketing: Governing the Sovereign Consumer
6 Industrialization: The High Costs of Cheap Food
7 Global Food: From Everywhere and Nowhere
8 Food Access: Surplus and Scarcity
9 Food and Social Change: The Incremental Revolution
