An inside look at the complex and controversial debates surrounding foie gras In the past decade, the French delicacy foie gras—the fattened liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed through a tube—has been at the center of contentious battles. In Contested Tastes, Michaela DeSoucey takes us to farms, restaurants, protests, and political hearings in both the United States and France to reveal why people care so passionately about foie gras—and why we should care, too. Bringing together fieldwork, interviews, and materials from archives and the media on both sides of the Atlantic, DeSoucey offers a compelling look at the moral arguments and provocative actions of pro- and anti-foie gras forces. She combines personal stories with fair-minded analysis and draws our attention to the cultural dynamics of markets, the multivocal nature of “gastropolitics,” and the complexities of what it means to identify as a “moral” eater in today’s food world. Investigating the causes and consequences of the foie gras wars, Contested Tastes illuminates the social significance of food and taste in the twenty-first century.

The Oxford Handbook of Consumption consolidates the most innovative recent work conducted by social scientists in the field of consumption studies and identifies some of the most fruitful lines of inquiry for future research. It begins by embedding marketing in its global history, enmeshed in various political, economic, and social sites. From this embedded perspective, the book branches out to examine the rise of consumer culture theory among consumer researchers and parallel innovative developments in sociology and anthropology, with scholarship analyzing the roles that identity, social networks, organizational dynamics, institutions, market devices, materiality, and cultural meanings play across a wide variety of applications, including, but not limited to, brands and branding, the sharing economy, tastes and preferences, credit and credit scoring, consumer surveillance, race and ethnicity, status, family life, well-being, environmental sustainability, social movements, and social inequality. The volume is unique in the attention it gives to consumer research on inequality and the focus it has on consumer credit scores and consumer behaviors that shape life chances. The volume includes essays by many of the key researchers in the field, some of whom have only recently, if at all, crossed the disciplinary lines that this volume has enabled. The contributors have tried to address several key questions: What motivates consumption and what does it mean to be a consumer? What social, technical, and cultural systems integrate and give character to contemporary consumption? What actors, institutions, and understandings organize and govern consumption? And what are the social uses and effects of consumption?

The papers in this volume continue our focus on emotions of people in Southeast Europe. Grief and sadness are, of course, universal, but they take on different forms of expression. Strong emotional values are often attached to specific foods (e.g. the kurban), usually food is of great importance for labour migrants and in times of crisis. Likewise, dress can be of great emotional significance and value. Wars as well as communist collectivization often lead to emotional consequences such as trauma. Smells and tastes can become expressions of actual or remembered emotions, a fact that can also concern the researchers themselves. Klaus Roth is professor em. at the Institute for European Ethnology of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Milena Benovska is professor em. of the Dept. of Ethnology and Balkan Studies of the South-West University of Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Ana Luleva is Assoc. Prof. at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia.

This book is a novel and original collection of essays on Italians and food. Food culture is central both to the way Italians perceive their national identity and to the consolidation of Italianicity in global context. More broadly, being so heavily symbolically charged, Italian foodways are an excellent vantage point from which to explore consumption and identity in the context of the commodity chain, and the global/local dialectic. The contributions from distinguished experts cover a range of topics including food and consumer practices in Italy, cultural intermediators and foodstuff narratives, traditions of production and regional variation in Italian foodways, and representation of Italianicity through food in old and new media. Although rooted in sociology, Italians and Food draws on literature from history, anthropology, semiotics and media studies, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of food studies, consumer culture, cultural sociology, and contemporary Italian studies.

Building and expanding on the first edition, the second edition of Food, National Identity and Nationalism continues to explore a much-neglected area study: the relationship between food and nationalism. With a preface written by Michaela DeSoucey and using a wide range of case studies, it demonstrates that food and nationalism is an important area to study, and that the food-nationalism axis provides a useful prism through which to explore and analyse the world around us, from the everyday to the global, and the ways in which it affects us. The second edition includes a number of new case studies, including the demise and resurrection of pie as a ‘national dish’ in post-Brexit Britain; the use of netnography; the role of diasporas in maintaining and reinventing national food; the gastrodiplomatic potential of the New Nordic Cuisine; the potential of veganism to transcend nationalism; and the relationship between gastronationalism and populism.

This entertaining and informative encyclopedia examines American regional foods, using cuisine as an engaging lens through which readers can deepen their study of American geography in addition to their understanding of America's collective cultures. Many of the foods we eat every day are unique to the regions of the United States in which we live. New Englanders enjoy coffee milk and whoopie pies, while Mid-Westerners indulge in deep dish pizza and Cincinnati chili. Some dishes popular in one region may even be unheard of in another region. This fascinating encyclopedia examines over 100 foods that are unique to the United States as well as dishes found only in specific American regions and individual states. Written by an established food scholar, We Eat What? A Cultural Encyclopedia of Bizarre and Strange Foods in the United States covers unusual regional foods and dishes such as hoppin' Johns, hush puppies, shoofly pie, and turducken. Readers will get the inside scoop on each food's origins and history, details on how each food is prepared and eaten, and insights into why and how each food is celebrated in American culture. In addition, readers can follow the recipes in the book's recipe appendix to test out some of the dishes for themselves. Appropriate for lay readers as well as high school students and undergraduates, this work is engagingly written and can be used to learn more about United States geography.

Illustrated with a wide range of examples, this book presents sensory cultures and practices in and of Asia.

Honorable Mention, 2021 Edited Collection Book Award, given by the Association for the Study of Food and Society How gentrification uproots the urban food landscape, and what activists are doing to resist it From hipster coffee shops to upscale restaurants, a bustling local food scene is perhaps the most commonly recognized harbinger of gentrification. A Recipe for Gentrification explores this widespread phenomenon, showing the ways in which food and gentrification are deeply—and, at times, controversially—intertwined. Contributors provide an inside look at gentrification in different cities, from major hubs like New York and Los Angeles to smaller cities like Cleveland and Durham. They examine a wide range of food enterprises—including grocery stores, restaurants, community gardens, and farmers’ markets—to provide up-to-date perspectives on why gentrification takes place, and how communities use food to push back against displacement. Ultimately, they unpack the consequences for vulnerable people and neighborhoods. A Recipe for Gentrification highlights how the everyday practices of growing, purchasing and eating food reflect the rapid—and contentious—changes taking place in American cities in the twenty-first century.

In Everyday Food Practices, Tarunna Sebastian explores the teaching and learning dimensions of people’s food choices and practices as they are played out in their everyday lives and local community. Using multi-sited critical ethnographic methodology, Sebastian followed people on their journeys while planning, shopping, preparing, cooking, and eating food. These journeys reveal that supermarket corporations play a hegemonic role, creating and sustaining class-based diets and cultural dynamics which undermine individual agency. Rebuking corporate hegemony, food education at counter-cultural sites—such as farmers’ markets, food cooperatives, and community gardens—seeks to empower people with knowledge and skills derived from socially and environmentally sustainable food curricula. However, class and ethnicity-based patterns of engagement compromise learning at these sites. Sebastian argues that, by contrast, the embodied experiences of inter-generational, home-based food practices are more effective in teaching sustainable cooking skills and the production of healthy meals.

The new, updated edition of the authoritative and comprehensive survey of modern sociology The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology, Second Edition is an authoritative survey of the major topics, current and emerging trends, and contemporary issues in the study of human social relationships and institutions. A collection of contributions from globally-recognized scholars and experts explore the theoretical and methodological foundations of sociology, new and established debates, and the most current research in the field. Broad in scope, this book covers a multitude of topics ranging from crime, urbanization, sexuality, and education to new questions surrounding big data, authoritarian capitalism, and the rise of nationalism. Since the first edition of the Companion was published, new developments have emerged and new problems have been created such as the omnipresence of social media, political and institutional upheaval, and the global refugee and immigration crises. This revised and updated second edition describes and explains social changes that have occurred in the past several years, both within the field of sociology and society as a whole. Previous material has been updated to reflect current research, while eleven new chapters address topics including feminist theory, debt and social change, and armed conflict and war. This comprehensive volume: Offers an engaging and accessible guide to the field of sociology, revised and updated for the second edition Presents wide-ranging, comprehensive coverage of the discipline Explores issues of contemporary relevance such as digital media and consumption Reflects state-of-the-art scholarship and contemporary debates New chapters for the second edition cover essential topics including feminist theory, armed conflict, big data, authoritarian capitalism, debt and social change, and the rise of nationalism The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology, Second Edition is an invaluable resource for academics and graduate students, researchers, scholars, and educators in the discipline of sociology and allied fields such as anthropology, human geography, political science, and psychology.