The Social Life of Food

Catalog description

Explores some of the ways that people use food, cuisines, and eating to organize and engage with social worlds. This focus provides a concrete means for deepening our understanding of alternative models of social explanation. Drawing on ethnographic material from a wide range of cultures, as well as feature films and our own observations and interviews, we consider topics such as the material dimensions of food production, distribution, and consumption (e.g., how food scarcity or abundance shapes collective possibilities, expectations, and values; the causes, consequences, forms, and myths of globalization) and the cultural meanings and social distinctions encoded in food practices (e.g., how food is used cross-culturally as a marker of social identity—class, gender, and ethnicity—and source of meaning—nostalgia, anxiety, and so on).