Food & Society

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.

Review:

"The third edition of Food & Society builds on the considerable strengths of its predecessors to compass a lively, accessible, and engaging journey through how and why we eat the ways we do. Its classroom exercises and supplementary reading suggestions help it earn its place as an anchor text for undergraduate introductions to the food system."
Raj Patel, University of Texas

"I have used this book with over a thousand undergrads. Its orientation around paradoxes provides just the right critical lens to rethink all that readers normally take for granted about food, while never letting them forget that eating habits are part of larger systems of power and inequality."
Charlotte Biltekoff, University of California

"This engaging book considers the often conflicting relationships between stakeholders across the food system. Approachable case studies that include donuts, beer, and antibiotics illustrate that there are complex social structures that impact our relationship to food."
Beth Forrest, Culinary Institute of America

Praise for the Second Edition:

"Food & Society gives us a fascinating introduction to the issues in food studies of greatest current concern. This exceptionally well-researched book explains why food matters so much and why it generates such intense controversy. The book may be aimed at students, but anyone interested in food issues will have much to learn from the paradoxes it presents."