Food & Society: Principles and Paradoxes

by Amy E. Guptill, Denise A. Copelton, Betsy Lucal

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509542246
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Edition description:	3rd ed.
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	871,845
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Amy E. Guptill is Professor of Sociology at SUNY Brockport.

Denise A. Copelton is Professor of Sociology at SUNY Brockport.

Betsy Lucal is Professor of Sociology at Indiana University South Bend.

Table of Contents

1 Principles and Paradoxes in the Study of Food

2 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

Editorial Reviews

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

“The third edition of this book maintains its position as a principal introduction to food studies. This edition contains a greater awareness of the global food system as revealed to many through the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers an updated discussion of the wider role of food labels and their connection to important social movements.”
Cultural Sociology

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.”
Marion Nestle, New York University

From the Publisher