Food and Place

A Critical Exploration

Edited by Pascale Joassart-Marcelli, Fernando J. Bosco

Publication date:

22 December 2017

Length of book:

366 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442266506

This text provides a comprehensive and critical exploration of food from the unique perspective of place. It shows that our experiences with food are deeply influenced by their cultural, social, economic, and political contexts. The authors explore a wide range of questions such as: Do GMOs threaten rural livelihoods? Why don’t we eat dogs? Does your neighborhood make you fat? Do community gardens encourage urban gentrification? Can cheese save a local economy? Why are gourmet burgers appearing on menus all over the world? How do immigrants use food to create a sense of place? Does mainstream nutrition stigmatize bodies? Is the kitchen an oppressive place? Can celebrity chefs change the food system? Critically engaged and connected to current activist and academic debates, Food and Place will be an essential resource for students across the social sciences.
This is not a dry weighty compendium intended to be memorized and regurgitated at exam time. It is provocative and engaging reading offering fresh perspectives on the food challenges encountered in everyday life today.... Most engaging are the “food for thought” segments between chapters, which allow the reader to “digest” the material through reflection, activities, and recipes intended to get the reader out in the community as a participant-observer or in the kitchen as a critically aware cook.... In sum, Food and Place: A Critical Exploration is not only a fascinating college textbook, which, in this case, is not an oxymoron. But also it will resonate with the general public interested in provocative contemporary questions such as: Why don’t we eat dogs? Does your neighborhood make you fat? Do community gardens encourage urban gentrification? Can cheese save a local economy? Is the kitchen an oppressive place?