Food - Sociology - Oxford Bibliographies

Food - Sociology - Oxford Bibliographies -
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Food
Michaela DeSoucey
Introduction
Food is a relatively new empirically distinct area within sociology. Previously, studies of food production
and consumption typically fell under the purview of research on health, agrarian studies, development sociology, agricultural
economy, or social anthropology. Rural and natural resource sociologists especially have long emphasized the management and
impacts of food production systems in their work. In classical tomes food was typically mentioned as an example of social
classification or of social problems rather than a distinct object of study. Since the 1980s sociologists attention to how food
strengthens social ties; marks social differences; and is integrated into social organizational forms, ranging from households to
empires, has grown. Early-21st-century interest in food by both researchers and the larger public follows heightened awareness of
the global character of markets and politics, concerns with health and safety, and the ways cooking and dining out have become
fodder for media spectacle. Today sociologists of food display considerable diversity in their theoretical approaches, research
methods, and empirical foci. Sociologists draw upon both classic and contemporary sociological theorists to study foods
production, distribution, and consumption as well as how food and eating are integrated into social institutions, systems, and
networks. Topically, sociologists contribute to research on inequality and stratification, culture, family, markets, politics and power,
identity, status, migration, labor and work, health, the environment, and globalization. Late-20th- and early-21st-century sociological
work on food is characterized by two overlapping threads: food systems (derived in part from scholarship on agricultural production
and applied extension as well as environmental, developmental, and rural sociology) and food politics, identity, and culture (which
reveals social anthropological and cultural-historical undertones). Both are nested in the emerging interdisciplinary research field of
food studies, which has gained greater institutional footholds at universities in Europe and Australia than in the United States and
Canada. Sociologists working across the two threads examine issues of food and inequality, trade, labor, power, capital, culture,
and technological innovation. This article maps out social science research and theorizing on what we eat, how we produce and
procure food, who benefits, with whom we eat, what we think about food, and how food fits with contemporary social life.
General Overviews
The 1980s and 1990s saw the publication of several landmark works (in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia) providing
overviews of food and eating as specifically sociological topics of inquiry. Early British volumes, such as Murcott 1983 and
Beardsworth and Keil 1997, draw from microsociological subfields, such as gender and interactionist perspectives, and focus on the
social and cultural meanings of everyday food experiences. Caplan 1997 incorporates health considerations into these
experiences. Warde 1997 uses changing trends in food practices to examine cultural theories of taste and consumption. Maurer
and Sobal 1995 and McIntosh 1996 filter food issues through the lenses of social constructionism and social problems. Coveney
2006 analyzes food meanings in relation to theories of governance and the state.
Beardsworth, Alan, and Teresa Keil. 1997. Sociology on the menu: An invitation to the study of food and society. London:
Routledge.
Highlights social organization, forces, and mechanisms within the food system (with an empirical focus on Great Britain) from
production to consumption. Chapters stress relationships with age/gender, family, class, health and body image, anxiety over food
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scares and safety, and related policy issues. A useful text for undergraduate courses.
Caplan, Pat, ed. 1997. Food, health, and identity. London: Routledge.
Unique compilation of fieldwork findings by sociologists and anthropologists on food practices in the British context. Contributes to
knowledge of health-related aspects of food and social identity.
Coveney, John. 2006. 2d ed. Food, morals, and meaning: The pleasure and anxiety of eating. London: Routledge.
Uses a Foucauldian analysis to examine notions of governmentality in the rationalization of food choices, diet, nutrition, and guilt.
This edition adds discussion of national and international moral panics about obesity. Originally published in 2000.
Maurer, Donna, and Jeffery Sobal, eds. 1995. Eating agendas: Food and nutrition as social problems. Social Problems and
Social Issues. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
A valuable compilation of issues of food and nutrition from a social constructionist/social problems perspective. Chapters highlight
the quantity of food people eat or to which they have access, problems associated with the qualities of these foods (such as
concerns over contamination or meat eating), and issues related to the food industry and government policies.
McIntosh, W. Alex. 1996. Sociologies of food and nutrition. Environment, Development, and Public Policy: Public Policy
and Social Services. New York: Plenum.
An early and important book focused on nutrition as a social fact, meaning a community-based concept or value that constrains
behavior. Emphasis is on nutritions relationship to class and social change at the macro level of the state (using World Bank and
United Nations data). The conclusion attends to theoretical questions in studying food and nutrition as social problems.
Murcott, Anne, ed. 1983. The sociology of food and eating: Essays on the sociological significance of food. Gower
International Library of Research and Practice. Aldershot, UK: Gower.
Offers an introductory essay that discusses the sociological significance of researching large-scale food production separately from
food and eating. Useful empirical chapters on research conducted in Great Britain on vegetarianism, agribusiness and industry,
household and family, the morality of diet and food choices, food during pregnancy, mens cooking, working-class mothers views
on food and health, and wedding meals.
Warde, Alan. 1997. Consumption, food, and taste: Culinary antinomies and commodity culture. London: SAGE.
A theoretically dense book on how taste is expressed through consumption using food habits and expenditure patterns in late-20thcentury Great Britain as lenses. The cultural antimonies of the subtitle are meaning-based oppositions (such as economy versus
extravagance) used in making and representing food choices in both commercial and informal venues.
Textbooks and Encyclopedias

Several useful textbooks and encyclopedias of food history and culinary culture have been published in recent years. General
textbooks suitable for undergraduate courses include Belasco 2008, Germov and Williams 2008, and Guptill et al. 2013. The edited
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collections Counihan and Van Esterik 2008 and Watson and Caldwell 2005 offer an empirical breadth of topics of sociological and
anthropological interest in food. The encyclopedic collections Davidson 2006, Smith 2004, and Erdkamp 2011, the latter a sixvolume set tracing food history from Antiquity to the early 21st century, provide useful starting points for students and scholars
beginning new research projects.
Belasco, Warren. 2008. Food: The key concepts. Oxford: Berg.

A useful and clear overview for undergraduate sociology of food classes. Belasco, an American studies scholar, creates (and then
unpacks) a culinary triangle that eaters must negotiate: identity, responsibility, and convenience. Chapters contain summary
points and optional exercises; suggested essay and discussion questions are in a separate section at the end.
Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik, eds. 2008. Food and culture: A reader. 2d ed. New York: Routledge.
A good handbook for undergraduate studies that compiles essays and empirical chaptersclassic and contemporaryand
arranges them into themes: foundations of food studies, gender and consumption, identity politics, and political economy. Originally
published in 1997. This second edition is accompanied by new online supplements and an instructors manual.
Davidson, Alan. 2006. The Oxford companion to food. 2d ed. Edited by Tom Jaine. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Contains 2,650 entries on the historical background of different food items.
Erdkamp, Paul, ed. 2011. A cultural history of food. 6 vols. Oxford: Berg.
A six-volume set with contributions from established food studies scholars. Volumes move through Antiquity, medieval times, the
Renaissance, the early modern period, the age of empire, and the modern age.
Germov, John, and Lauren Williams, eds. 2008. A sociology of food and nutrition: The social appetite. 3d ed. South
Melbourne, Australia: Oxford Univ. Press.
Reviews sociocultural, political, economic, and philosophical influences that shape food production, distribution, choice, and
consumption. Written in a textbook style and updated several times since its initial publication in 1999; each chapter includes key
terms, summaries of main arguments, and classroom discussion questions.
Guptill, Amy E., Denise E. Copelton, and Betsy Lucal, 2013. Food and society: Principles and paradoxes. Malden, MA:
Polity Press.
A solid and timely text for undergraduate sociology of food courses. While the text can be a little citation-heavy, chapters cover an
array of topics and case studies from competitive eating and food porn to industrial food production and food access. Chapters
include suggested discussion questions and student activities.
Smith, Andrew F., ed. 2004. The Oxford encyclopedia of food and drink in America. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Two-volume set of topics on food cultural histories and geographies, ethnic cuisines, corporations, politics and policies, emerging
technologies, inventions, holidays, people, and social movementsfrom apple pie to zombies.
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Watson, James L., and Melissa L. Caldwell, eds. 2005. The cultural politics of food and eating: A reader. Blackwell Readers
in Anthropology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
This reader brings together previously published research in sociology and anthropology that explores global food markets and
cultural identity politics. Chapters include the foundational work of Daniel Miller on Coca-Cola as a metasymbol that integrates into
non-American cultures and William Roseberry on gourmet coffee culture and social class.
Data Sources
Sociologists of food often need to be creative in collecting data. Many work qualitatively and comparatively, compiling their own
datasets out of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews; news, policy-related, or historical documentary sources; or materials such as
food magazines, food packaging, cookbooks, advertisements, and so on. Aside from data collected by the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA), few quantitative datasets that deal directly with food behaviors and the food system exist in the public domain.
Other government-collected surveys that touch upon topics related to food and eating include the National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey, the American Time Use Survey, and the Food Attitudes and Behaviors Survey. United Nations data on
international food trade and policies are available from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Statistical
Database. The International Food Policy Research Institute shares its reports and data on international food- and agriculturalrelated policies in developing countries. The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University collects and
publicizes data related to contemporary American food consumption patterns. Although food industry and advertising firms have
copious data on which to base their business strategies, that information is largely proprietary and inaccessible to academic
researchers. Other general survey organizations sometimes ask questions related to food choices, food behaviors, and eating
habits.
American Time Use Survey.

Conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) offers nationally representative data on time
spent eating, purchasing, and preparing food and on food-related travel on both weekdays and weekends. The surveys Eating and
Health Module was fielded from 2006 to 2008, and microdata files are also available online. The USDAs Agricultural Research
Service (cited under US Department of Agriculture) maintains a user guide for this module.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Statistical Database.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) collects and offers the most
comprehensive data available on international food and agriculture for two hundred countries. Statistics are collected on issues of
food security, forestry and fishery resources, hunger, land use, agricultural exports and imports, and commodity markets.
Food Attitudes and Behaviors Survey.

Administered by the National Cancer Institute since 2007, the Food Attitudes and Behaviors Survey (FAB) evaluates factors related
to vegetable and fruit intake by American adults: attitudes and beliefs, shopping patterns, consumption, eating behaviors,
environmental influences, and physical activity. The survey instrument and codebook are available via the Internet, and raw data
must be requested.
International Food Policy Research Institute.
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The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) collects survey data related to fighting hunger and poverty in developing
countries at household, community, and institutional levels. Researchers can access these data and the IFPRIs reports on its
website or on CD-ROM.
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since the 1960s, the National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey (NHANES) surveys the health and nutritional status of American children and adults through a nationally
representative sample of approximately five thousand persons each year. Importantly, the NHANES combines standardized
interview data with physical examinations.
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

This nonprofit research and policy-focused organization, housed at Yale University, conducts social science research with the goal
of combating obesity in the United States and abroad. The centers website offers databases of publications, policy reports, and
legislation related to food policy as well as podcasts, teaching resources, and community-based program development information.
US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Numerous datasets applicable for sociologists and social scientists are available through the following offices located within the US
Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Agricultural Research Service researches economic and policy issues mostly related to
natural resources and rural America. The National Agricultural Statistics Service conducts hundreds of surveys pertinent to US
agricultural statistics each year. The Foreign Agricultural Service provides international agricultural trade data, and the Agricultural
Marketing Service offers data on domestic and international agricultural marketing and data and reports relevant to the US National
Organic Program and direct-to-consumer marketing programs. The Food and Nutrition Service supplies data and reports on the
food and nutrition assistance programs that it administers, including the National School Lunch Program and the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly the Food Stamp Program).
Agricultural Marketing Service.

Data on standardization and grading for US commodity programs (dairy, fruit and vegetable, livestock and seed, cotton, tobacco,
and poultry and eggs). A separate branch accredits and administers the National Organic Program.
Agricultural Research Service.

Provides fact sheets by state and data on rural development, natural resources, and some global agriculture and commodities. The
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Food Surveys Research Group monitors food consumption and behaviors in connection with
the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (cited under Data Sources).
Food and Nutrition Service.

Data and reports on nutrition assistance programs.
Foreign Agricultural Service.
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Data on agricultural imports, exports, and trade policies.
National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Offers US agricultural production statistics and census, demographic, geospatial, and commodity data.
Library Collections
Several libraries around the United States have become well regarded for their focused collections of materials related to food and
cuisine in American social history. In New York City the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University and the
Culinary History research guide at the New York Public Library house expansive collections of culinary history and ephemera,
including private collections and historical menus. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Library will be
especially useful for sociologists doing historical research on American food policies. The Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University focuses on womens history and food. The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary
Archive at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan includes rare books, documents, and ephemera and curates wellreceived special exhibits. The Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson and Wales University, housed within a culinary school, collects
historical collections related to the food service industry. Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project at Michigan
State University consists primarily of archived and digitized cookbooks. The David Walker Lupton African American Cookbook
Collection at the University of Alabama will be a terrific resource for scholars working at the intersections of food and African
American history.
Culinary Arts Museum. Johnson and Wales Univ.

These archives began with a set of books, menus, and other artifacts donated in 1989. They contain more than 250,000 items
donated by prominent chefs, authors, journalists, and restaurateurs. The museum has been called the Smithsonian Institution of
the food service industry.
Culinary History. New York Public Library.

An expansive collection related to foods, beverages, and cooking, including more than sixteen thousand cookbooks and twenty-five
thousand historical menus (strong for the turn of the 20th century) housed in the Rare Books Division.
David Walker Lupton African American Cookbook Collection at the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library. Univ. of
Alabama.
This collection will especially interest those studying relationships between food and African American culture. The collection
includes 450 volumes published between 1827 (with the first book of recipes published by an African American) and 2000.
Fales Library and Special Collections. New York Univ.

The Food and Cookery collection is the largest of any US research library. The collection documents evolving 20th-century
American food and culinary practices with a particular focus on New York City and includes various collections of private papers,
culinary-related ephemera, and organizational archives, including those of James Beard and Les Dames dEscoffier. Researchers
must make appointments in advance. Titles may be searched through the online catalogue Bobcat.
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Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project. Michigan State Univ.
This projects website offers page images from seventy-six digitized historic cookbooks and has been selected by the Library of
Congress for inclusion in its historic collections of Internet materials. The Michigan State University Cookery Collection consists of
more than ten thousand cookbooks.
Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive. William L. Clements Library, Univ. of Michigan.
Besides books, this collection includes more than twenty thousand documents and materials from the 16th to the 20th centuries;
curates rotating special exhibits; and covers a number of subjects, including regional foodways, the history of food advertising,
charity cookbooks, and war cookery. The Clements Library offers a variety of fellowships for short-term research visits.
National Agricultural Library. United States Department of Agriculture.

The USDAs library and archives. The website contains a database of citations to agricultural articles, books, and electronic
resources accessible through the online catalogue AGRICOLA. Main archives and collections are located in the Washington, DC,
area, and appointments should be made in advance for access to the librarys rare and special collections.
Schlesinger Library. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard Univ.

The Schlesingers culinary holdings began through collections recording womens work and domestic lives in US history. The
holdings include fifteen thousand titles, many of them rare, covering culinary history, culinary professions, domestic history and
household management, and the role of food in American gender history and culture. Collections of private papers include those of
Julia Child, M. F. K. Fisher, and Elizabeth David.
Journals
Sociological studies of food are appearing with increasing regularity in general and rural sociology journals as well as specialized
journals focused on interdisciplinary food research and scholarship. Two of the most prominent specialized journals published in the
United States are Food, Culture, and Society and Agriculture and Human Values; the first leans toward food studies, whereas the
latter takes a more food systemsoriented approach. Gastronomica combines scholarly work on food with articles and art appealing
to humanist and general audiences interested in food. There is also much international research on food, and many journals are
edited outside the United States. Some well-known journals include Food and Foodways, Appetite, Food Policy, the British Food
Journal, and the International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food.
Agriculture and Human Values. 1984.

The journal of the Agriculture and Human Values Society. Publishes interdisciplinary research on past, current, and alternative food
production and agricultural and environmental systems. The journals aim is to provide links between liberal arts and agricultural
disciplines, especially rural sociology.
Appetite. 1980.
An international journal that specializes in behavioral nutrition, dietary attitudes, and practices that tie to the physiology of
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consumption, food attitudes, and marketing exposure. The journal mainly publishes short articles, book reviews, and conference
abstracts.
British Food Journal. 1899.

Interdisciplinary publishing of food-related research, both theoretical and applied, with frequent special issues on themed topics.
This journal is an especially useful resource for understanding current issues in the global food industry.
Food and Foodways. 1985.

Publishes interdisciplinary peer-reviewed articles and essays on the culture and history of food and the roles food plays in human
relations, especially folklore.
Food, Culture, and Society. 1996.

An interdisciplinary journal published by the Association for the Study of Food and Society. It publishes peer-reviewed articles on
topics of food politics, culture, media, history, and culinary consumption and reflections on methodological and pedagogical issues
and book reviews.
Food Policy. 1975.

A multidisciplinary journal that publishes empirical research and theoretical essays on policy issues for the food sector across
developing and developed countries, including trade, security, environment, and food safety.
Gastronomica. 2001.
Offers food-focused nonfiction essays, fiction, poetry, and art related to the critical, theoretical, and cultural impact of food as
cuisine. This is a visually attractive publication with many photographs and color images that is appealing to a more general
readership.
International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. 1991.

Published in the United Kingdom, this journal includes interdisciplinary articles and often sponsors debates related to agriculture
and agricultural change, with contributions from leading sociologists of food and agricultural production.
Classic Works
Scholarly underpinnings of todays sociology of food include classic research from anthropologists and cultural historians. Topics
structuring this contributive work include structuralist analyses of food taboos, symbolism, social hierarchies, gender, and the social
organization of food practices and preferences across classes, nations, and cultures. These works are discussed here for the
frequency with which they are referenced by and contribute to shaping the ideas of sociologists of food.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
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Sociologists of food who work in areas related to culture often rely on foundational anthropological theories. Claude Lvi-Strauss
(Lvi-Strauss 1979a, Lvi-Strauss 1979b) is widely renowned for his semantic and structural analyses of food as myth and as a
vehicle for codifying universal structures of human thought. Marshall Sahlins (Sahlins 1990) and Mary Douglas (Douglas 2000,
Douglas 1972, Douglas 1984) also famously adopted a structuralist view of foods and meals as symbolic codes or texts with rules
about the social order to be deciphered through analysis.
Douglas, Mary. 1972. Deciphering a meal. Daedalus 101.1: 6181.

An oft-cited essay that structurally analyzes the proper meal and its derivations (using the traditional British meal as the object of
study). Available online by subscription.
Douglas, Mary. 2000. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge.
Investigates food prohibitions as maintaining symbolic boundaries rather than regulating health, showing concern with the human
component of the meal process. Originally published in 1966.
Douglas, Mary, ed. 1984. Food in the social order: Studies of food and festivities in three American communities. New
York: Russell Sage Foundation.
An edited collection that explores how food patterning is learned from shared cultural experiences and signals membership in three
different ethnic and class-based social groups.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. 1979a. The origin of table manners. Translated by John Weightman and Doreen Weightman. New
York: Harper and Row.
Expands the authors earlier structuralist analyses of South American native mythology to considerations of eating and appetite
practices as indicative of social rules and order.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude. 1979b. The raw and the cooked. Translated by John Weightman and Doreen Weightman.
Mythologiques. New York: Octagon.
A foundational piece of structural and linguistic anthropology and part of Lvi-Strausss Mythologiques series, this work offers
structuralist models of the rules and conventions that govern the ways food items and cooking practices in Native American
mythology are classified by social norms and expectations and deeper social structures.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1990. Food as symbolic code. In Culture and society: Contemporary debates. Edited by Jeffrey C.
Alexander and Steven Seidman, 94101. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Within his extensive body of work, Sahlins examines the symbolic values and cultural-moral orders attached to different animals as,
or not as, foodstuffs. Making distinctions between the culinary value and taboo of eating different animalsnamely, eating cows
versus horses or dogshe explains human food habits as a reflection of cultural rather than utilitarian reason.
CULTURAL HISTORIES OF FOOD PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
Cultural historians built a solid foundation for modern food scholarship. Some are more sweeping and others more focused in their
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claims; both types are full of useful, sociologically relevant information. Examples of important resources in this area highlight
issues of identity and cultural norms (Visser 1986), immigration (Gabaccia 1998), and political and corporate influences on the food
system (Levenstein 1993).
Gabaccia, Donna R. 1998. We are what we eat: Ethnic food and the making of Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ.
Press.
A readable and interesting look at ethnic food integration and influences on American food and eating habits. Also discusses mass
corporatization of these foods into American food culture.
Levenstein, Harvey. 1993. Paradox of plenty: A social history of eating in modern America. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Charts the rise and fall of economic, political, and cultural influences on American eating habits from the Great Depression to the
Ronald Reagan era. Theparadox of the title is the accounting for hunger in a time of agricultural bounty.
Visser, Margaret. 1986. Much depends on dinner: The extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils
and taboos, of an ordinary meal. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
A cultural history of dinnertime that focuses on how and why we eat as we do and that argues, in a reader-friendly manner, that
food rules (and their teaching) are necessary for social group identity and continuity.
CONTRIBUTIONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
Two important works by British savants in the early 1980s, Goody 1982 and Mennell 1996, set an agenda for materialist,
comparative, and empirically focused case studies of food and cuisine within sociology. Bourdieu 1984 similarly straddles
anthropology and sociology in theorizing how class structures underlay food practices and tastes in mid- to late-20th-century
French society. Fischler 1990 also compiles massive amounts of data on French eating choices and habits.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Univ. Press.
This foundational tome uses empirical food consumption patterns and choices from different French social classes to explore the
social distribution and class reproduction of tastes. The essence of Bourdieus model is that of internalized social and cultural
capital as distinguishing class status. Food is a key social agent of this important and oft-referenced theory.
Fischler, Claude. 1990. Lhomnivore: Le got, la cuisine et le corps. Paris: Jacob.

Fischler, a French sociologist, has devoted his career to empirically analyzing French eating habits, choices, and anxieties, coining
the term gastro-anomie. This text, published fifteen years before Michael Pollans best-selling Omnivores Dilemma (New York:
Penguin, 2006) and addressing similar questions, focuses on the omnivores paradox or social responses to the biological need
for diversified nutrients in a rapidly changing food environment.
Goody, Jack. 1982. Cooking, cuisine, and class: A study in comparative sociology. Themes in the Social Sciences.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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The author challenges conventional hierarchical notions of high and popular cuisine put forth by Western cultural understandings
with this study of culinary patterns in Ghanaian tribes, in which wealth translates as access to more of the same food rather than
dividing into elite and peasant cuisines.
Mennell, Stephen. 1996. All manners of food: Eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present.
2d ed. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
An impressive and famous comparison of historical and political differences shaping the historical development of food cultures and
taste standards across British and French contexts. Originally published in 1985.
Food and Agricultural Production

In the early 21st century more than twenty million Americans work in the food domain, from agricultural production and processing
to distribution and retail. Research on food and agricultural systems within rural sociology programs gained particular strength
beginning in the late 1970s, with scholarly centers developing at the University of Missouri, the University of Wisconsin, and Cornell
University. These hubs have crucially shown how food commodities and agricultural industry concentration function within national
and transnational market and governance systems. In 1978 an International Sociological Association research committee
formalized the sociology of agriculture as a distinct research area. Food was added to the groups name in 1987 (making it the
Research Committee on the Sociology of Agriculture and Food). This vein of research and theory draws primarily from schools of
thought in environmental sociology, world systems theory, and neo-Marxist analyses and theories. Scholars working in these areas,
including many highlighted here, have necessarily recognized that national agricultural policies operate in the shifting contexts of
the world economy, transnational migration, the social organization of agricultural production, and transnational corporations.
Additionally, social problems have long accompanied behind-the-scenes work in the food industry around the globe, from the (often
negative) physical-environmental effects of agriculture to the farm labor system to the work of preparing, serving, and cleaning up in
restaurants and food retail establishments on the retail side of the equation. In the United States postNorth American Free Trade
Agreement social economics have seen demographic shifts and transnational migration to new destinations, especially rural areas,
for work in agriculture, meatpacking, and poultry processing. Sociologists of work, rural communities, occupational segregation by
race and ethnicity, labor organizing, social networks and labor recruitment, and neoliberalisms impacts on local economies will be
interested in these themes.
CLASSIC STATEMENTS
In the 1980s and 1990s sociologists began addressing questions focused on the systematic analyses of global processes
underlying food system modernization and agrarian change in the 20th century. Works such as Friedmann 1982 and Friedmann
and McMichael 1989, discuss state-level politics and restructuring of national agricultural models, redefining them as global
agrofood regimes to account for the new roles of private global regulation initiatives and transnational agribusiness corporations.
Edited volumes such as McMichael 1994 and Bonanno, et al. 1994 further these insights. Structural changes in agriculture have
also been documented, analyzed, and critiqued by leading rural and political-economic sociologists in works such as Heffernan
1972; Friedland, et al. 1981; Kloppenburg 2004; and Buttel, et al. 1990. These studies trajectories have laid important groundwork
for more recent studies of agricultural privatization, commodity value chains, land rights and development, social problems of risk,
genomic politics and biopolitics, and transnational food-based resistance movements.
Bonanno, Alessandro, Lawrence Busch, William Friedland, Lourdes Gouveia, and Enzo Mingione, eds. 1994. From
Columbus to ConAgra: The globalization of agriculture and food. Rural America. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas.
A far-reaching overview of divisions of labor and capital in the globalization of agrofood regimes, especially in regard to the
emerging role and power of transnational agribusiness corporations.
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Buttel, Frederick H., Olaf F. Larson, and Gilbert W. Gillespie Jr. 1990. The sociology of agriculture. Contributions in
Sociology 88. New York: Greenwood.
Comprehensive overview of ninety years of rural sociological research on agricultural topics organized by temporal periods of
schools of inquiry.
Friedland, William H., Amy E. Barton, and Robert J. Thomas. 1981. Manufacturing green gold: Capital, labor, and
technology in the lettuce industry. Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series of the American Sociological Society.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Bridges sociology of agriculture and food with rural sociology in applying neo-Marxist theory to corporate evolution and power
concentration in the iceberg lettuce industry in the United States.
Friedmann, Harriet. 1982. The political economy of food: The rise and fall of the postwar international food order.
American Journal of Sociology 88:S248S286.
A historical analysis of the postWorld War II rise of an international food order based on food aid from the United States to
agrarian countries and the social consequences of these policies. Available online by subscription.
Friedmann, Harriet, and Philip McMichael. 1989. Agriculture and the state system: The rise and decline of national
agricultures, 1870 to the present. Sociologia Ruralis 29.2: 93117.
Looks at the role of agriculture in nation-state formation and policy making in global context. Introduces the concept of food regime,
which links international relations of food production and consumption from different time periods with different characteristics of
capital accumulation and transformation post-1870. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Heffernan, William D. 1972. Sociological dimensions of agricultural structures in the United States. Sociologia Ruralis
12.2: 481499.
Part of a larger body of work that documents and critiques structural changes in agrifood commodity chains, such as the evolution
of contract farming and vertical integrated production, transformed power relations, and social effects and consequences for
farmers, primarily among livestock operations. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Kloppenburg, Jack Ralph, Jr. 2004. First the seed: The political economy of plant biotechnology, 14922000. 2d ed.
Science and Technology in Society. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
A landmark study of the intersections between capitalism and agriculture first published in 1988. In-depth examination of plant
breeding, the seed industry, and emergent biotechnology firms.
McMichael, Philip, ed. 1994. The global restructuring of agro-food systems. Food Systems and Agrarian Change. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
An edited volume of essays by prominent rural and development sociologists that locates transformations of food and agricultural
systems in questions of global political economy, state-level restructuring, and international capital markets.
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MODERN PERSPECTIVES ON FOOD SYSTEMS
Work in the early 21st century has continued to build on questions and consequences of food system modernization and
industrialization, moving to closer examinations of different food industries in this larger theoretical paradigm. Lobao and Meyer
2001 provides a solid review of the evolution of farms and farming communities in the United States, pointing to a dearth of general
sociological attention to this important population. Winders 2009 focuses on the policy-based ebbs and flows of three major
American commodity programs. Narrowing in further to vexing aspects within meat industries, Striffler 2005 and Warren 2007
exemplify work on food systems integration with power and control.
Lobao, Linda, and Katherine Meyer. 2001. The great agricultural transition: Crisis, change, and social consequences of
twentieth century US farming. Annual Review of Sociology 27:103124.
Chronicles the 20th-century exodus from farms and farming communities and notes a lack of sociological attention, outside of
specialty publishing outlets, to farmers in the early 21st century. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Striffler, Steve. 2005. Chicken: The dangerous transformation of Americas favorite food. Yale Agrarian Studies. New
Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
Chronicles the dramatic rise of chicken as an industry and as part of the American diet and chickens equally dramatic drop in price.
Ethnographic work was conducted in a large poultry processing plant and considers the poultry industrys growing dependence on
Latin American immigrant labor.
Warren, Wilson J. 2007. Tied to the great packing machine: The Midwest and meatpacking. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press.
With a lens that reflects Upton Sinclairs novel The Jungle (1906), this book examines how meatpacking shaped cultural, economic,
community, and environmental development across the Midwest. The book also looks at changing patterns of meat consumption
and concerns about animal welfare.
Winders, Bill. 2009. The politics of food supply: U.S. agricultural policy in the world economy. Yale Agrarian Studies. New
Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
Follows the theories of Karl Polyani regarding the dialectic between market forces and government regulation. Empirically traces
US agricultural policy decisions on three commodity programs from the New Deal (cotton, corn, and wheat) through the passage of
the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act in 1996 and highlights relationships between US agricultural policies and other nations
policies.
Food and Social Inequality

Earlier and more recent sociologists of food have focused analytic lenses on gender, racial, and class inequities in food practices,
preferences, and work. The overview texts (see General Overviews) all contain one or more chapters about inequalities in social
practices and patterns related to food and eating. In some such studies food itself is the empirical subject of investigation. In others
food serves as a case, or indicator, of other social practices, patterns, or trends. Although gender, race, and class are inextricably
linked, they are separated here simply to highlight key scholarly contributions in each area. Sociologists of food and inequality will
be well served by relying on very good research conducted by scholars in neighboring social science disciplines: anthropology,
American studies, geography, public health, cultural history, gender studies, African American studies, environmental studies, and
others. The works listed here are a sampling of social science work that will prove useful for sociologists and students.
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GENDER
Feminist perspectives have played a large role in generating sociological attention to gendered power relationships in foods
production, service, and consumption. One important theme in this literature is the body. Lupton 1996 sets theoretical groundwork
for understanding the social construction of various foods as gendered and for linking the physical body, emotion work, and nutrition
and diet campaigns. Sobal and Maurer 1999 similarly addresses body weight issues as social problems, focusing on fat and
obesity. Oliver 2006 offers a political science viewpoint on the politics of fat. A second theme is how men and women do gender
through food, such as consuming gender-appropriate food or cooking at home (and all that it entails). Charles and Kerr 1988
provides one of the first detailed qualitative looks at cultural assumptions about food provision for men, women, and children in
1980s England. DeVault 1991 theorizes gendered efforts and care in invisible food work as caring work in the United States. A
third related theme traces and analyzes femininity and masculinity in food work. Theophano 2002 aggregates three centuries of
cookbooks to show how they help construct womens lives and social experiences. Shapiro 2004 focuses scholarly attention on
food and gender roles in a particularly emblematic decade, the 1950s. Meat is recognized as especially gendered; Sobal 2005
examines its links to ideas about masculinity and Adams 2010 to sexual politics more broadly.
Adams, Carol J. 2010. The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. New York: Continuum.
A landmark tome for students of animal rights and veganism as a belief system. Argues that vegetarianism should be considered
an essential part of feminism because of meats gendered political associations with patriarchy and violence.
Charles, Nickie, and Marion Kerr. 1988. Women, food, and families. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
A landmark study that examines food practices and beliefs within families using data from interviews and time diaries with two
hundred mothers in England in the 1980s. Findings include gendered social concerns about family health and diet and about
providing a proper meal as a fundamental role in domestic life.
DeVault, Marjorie L. 1991. Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as gendered work. Women in Culture and
Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
In this institutional ethnography of lower- and middle-class mothers in late-1980s Chicago, DeVault contends that food work is tied
to ideologies of wife and mother and of how women define and produce family life. She demonstrates how food work can draw
women into subordinate household relations and give them social agency and pleasure. A classic text.
Lupton, Deborah. 1996. Food, the body, and the self. London: SAGE.
Details the ways food takes on embodied moral meanings related to risk, self-control, consumption, emotion, and health.
Oliver, J. Eric. 2006. Fat politics: The real story behind Americas obesity epidemic. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
A political scientists approach to the 21st-century politics of obesity that will be useful for sociologists of contemporary food and
consumption politics. Oliver asserts that concern for obesity is fueled by economic and political causes and by culturally and
historically stigmatizing attitudes toward fatness rather than real concerns with health and wellness.
Shapiro, Laura. 2004. Something from the oven: Reinventing dinner in 1950s America. New York: Viking.
Analyzes the postWorld War II dinner table, the growth of cookbooks and other domestic guides, and the influence of convenience
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foods (and the companies that produce and market them) on the American diet. An important and detailed work for culturalhistorical scholarship on the American relationships among food, family, and gender roles.
Sobal, Jeffery. 2005. Men, meat, and marriage: Models of masculinity. Food and Foodways 13.12: 135158.
Studies masculinity through doing meat as an archetypal male food and as a contested food object within marriages. Suggests
the activation of multiple gendered cultural scripts about food choices. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Sobal, Jeffery, and Donna Maurer, eds. 1999. Weighty issues: Fatness and thinness as social problems. Social Problems
and Social Issues. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
One of the first volumes to look at body weight concerns and issues, especially those related to fat and obesity, as social problems.
Chapters include empirical analyses of weight control among children, self-surveillance, the diet industry, and the size acceptance
movement.
Theophano, Janet. 2002. Eat my words: Reading womens lives through the cookbooks they wrote. New York: Palgrave.
Explores cookbooks from the 17th to the early 21st centuries as primary texts to show how women have used them in structuring
their lives, from self-education to celebrating cultural heritage to political activism. An especially good resource for researchers
interested in using documents, books, and ephemera as data.
RACE/ETHNICITY
Gender inequalities in food and foodways frequently intersect with race and ethnicity. Sociologists studying race and ethnic
inequality often look at food production and consumption, from fields and factories to restaurants and retail operations, and at foods
ties to identity politics. Barndt 2002 uses the tomato as a way to link racial inequalities in food systems from field to retail. Witt 1999
looks at the politics of racial identity and food for African Americans through the lens of soul food. Williams-Forson 2006 offers a
cultural perspective on female black racial stereotypes in popular culture. These issues also manifest materially in stark inequalities
of food availability and consumption (see Social Change, Activism, and Ethical Consumerism).
Barndt, Deborah. 2002. Tangled routes: Women, work, and globalization on the tomato trail. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield.
Ethnographically traces the tomatos path from Mexican fields to fast-food restaurants and supermarkets in Canada using gender,
race, and globalization as orienting frames. Sheds important light on the global food economys interconnected racialization,
feminization, skill segmentation, and lowered wages. A solid precursor to Barry Estabrooks popular nonfiction book Tomatoland
(Kansas City, MO: McMeel, 2011).
Williams-Forson, Psyche A. 2006. Building houses out of chicken legs: Black women, food, and power. Chapel Hill: Univ.
of North Carolina Press.
Documents and analyzes stereotypes of black women in food images across magazines, literature, film, historic documents, and
popular culture from an American studies perspective.
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Witt, Doris. 1999. Black hunger: Food and the politics of U.S. identity. Race and American Culture. New York: Oxford Univ.
Press.
This book uses the popularity of soul food among the black middle class in the 1960s and 1970s to explore how racial and gender
stereotypes are enacted and challenged through popular food images and discourse. Revised edition, Black Hunger: Soul Food
and America (2004).
SOCIAL CLASS
Many sociologists interested in food and inequality in the early 21st century are simultaneously interested in issues of class and
social stratification. Poppendieck 1986, Poppendieck 1999, and Poppendieck 2010 blazed trails, analyzing the social history of food
access and governmental provisioning policies for both adults and children and their ties to politics. Rank and Hirschl 1995 and
Rank and Hirschl 2005 exemplify sociological questions and concerns about hunger and food stamp participation through their
multidecade research trajectory. Social class inequalities in food consumption also manifest in middle- and upper-middle-class
cultural concerns, as analyzed in Glassner 2008 and exemplified in Johnston and Baumann 2010.
Glassner, Barry. 2008. The gospel of food: Why we should stop worrying and enjoy what we eat. New York: HarperCollins.
A skeptical scrutiny and evaluation of fads, claims, beliefs, and conventional wisdom in middle- and upper-middle-class American
food culture.
Johnston, Jose, and Shyon Baumann. 2010. Foodies: Democracy and distinction in the gourmet foodscape. Cultural
Spaces. New York: Routledge.
Blends interviews with self-professed foodies and content analysis of contemporary American food journalism to advance
understanding of how food as cultural consumption sustains elite status and reproduces inequality in food consumption practices.
Poppendieck, Janet. 1986. Breadlines knee-deep in wheat: Food assistance in the Great Depression. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers Univ. Press.
Connects two historically important themes for sociologists of foodhunger and farming in the 20th-century United Statesby
examining the linked development of national food assistance programs and the farm lobby.
Poppendieck, Janet. 1999. Sweet charity? Emergency food and the end of entitlement. New York: Penguin.
Scrutinizes the expansion and work of emergency food and hunger relief programs and social and political constraints upon them.
Poppendieck, Janet. 2010. Free for all: Fixing school food in America. California Studies in Food and Culture. Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press.
This book has played an important role in early-21st-century critiques of the United States National School Lunch Program
regarding its political history and corporate ties and the general nutritional state of foods provided to children.
Rank, Mark R., and Thomas A. Hirschl. 1995. The food stamp program and hunger: Constructing three different claims. In
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Eating agendas: Food and nutrition as social problems. Edited by Donna Maurer and Jeffery Sobal, 241258. Social
Problems and Social Issues. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Analyzes participation, duration, and claims regarding food stamp use, including misunderstandings and purposeful avoidance by
some potential beneficiaries.
Rank, Mark R., and Thomas A. Hirschl. 2005. Likelihood of using food stamps during the adulthood years. Journal of
Nutrition Education and Behavior 37.3: 137146.
Uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data from 1968 to 1997 to show that slightly more than half of all Americans between
twenty and sixty-five years old will receive food stamps (administered in all states as an electronic benefit transfer debit card since
2004) at some point during their lifetimes, with significant effects for race and education. Available online for purchase or by
subscription.
Food Markets and Food Nations

Markets for food production and consumption have always traveled alongside people and have always transformed cultures and
societies in the process. Today the food system is truly global, as contextualized in Inglis and Gimlin 2009, among other works. This
globalization provides vehicles for identity construction or rejection through food choice, with those choices marking group
membership within national and transnational flows. Mintz 1985 is considered a classic work in this regard. Pilcher 1998 and
Ferguson 2004 are important contributions for thinking about the development and cultural power of national identity. In some
cases, it is foods themselves that move between points of origin and points of consumption. In others it is people and businesses
that move, introducing new practices and ideas and creating new meanings for local products in the context of internal and external
markets. The global spread of fast-food restaurants and American food icons, epitomized by companies such as McDonalds and
Coca-Cola, has been a well-studied phenomenon, exemplified in Ritzer 1993, Fantasia 1995, and Watson 1997. Modern food
production continues to have provisional impacts on ideas about global and local markets and cultural identities, as shown in
Trubek 2008 and DeSoucey 2010. These works represent only a sample of what has been published on these topics since the
1980s.
DeSoucey, Michaela. 2010. Gastronationalism: Food traditions and authenticity politics in the European Union. American
Sociological Review 75.3: 432455.
Examines the macro- and micropolitics of national identity for artisanal food producers in pan-national Europe. Analyzes the
European Unions program for designation of origin labeling and the case of foie gras in France to highlight social contention with
pan-national cultural integration. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Fantasia, Rick. 1995. Fast food in France. Theory and Society 24.2: 201243.
Considers the expansion of fast-food restaurants throughout the 1980s and 1990s in France, a national cultural context that at the
time seemed anathema to such an institution.
Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. 2004. Accounting for taste: The triumph of French cuisine. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Chronicles how French cuisine and gastronomy were invented as a Bourdieuian cultural field at the end of the 19th century and
served as mobilizing vehicles for nationalist identity construction strategically linked to cultural and political ideology.
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Inglis, David, and Debra Gimlin, eds. 2009. The globalization of food. Oxford: Berg.
Chapters point out some of the many ways food affects and is affected by global social relations of culture, markets, and politics.
The editors introduction especially provides a thorough sociological overview of these issues in attempting to bridge different
strands of the literature on food and society.
Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history. New York: Viking.
One of the first books to investigate the extensive social history of a single food, setting the stage for a proliferation of books in this
vein. Mintz, an anthropologist, explores the power of sugar as a commodity tied to global trade and politics in the Atlantic world and
its evolution as a cultural marker of class identity.
Pilcher, Jeffrey M. 1998. Que vivan los tamales! Food and the making of Mexican identity. Dilogos. Albuquerque: Univ. of
New Mexico Press.
Examines the origins and creation of a national Mexican cuisine as it was used to forge a unified Mexican national identity,
illuminated by contests between elite (Europeanized) culinary tastes and regional, corn-based diets and dishes.
Ritzer, George. 1993. The McDonaldization of society: An investigation into the changing character of contemporary social
life. Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge.
The McDonaldization thesis has been a powerful one for teaching and research: that the fast-food restaurantepitomized by
McDonaldsrepresents a contemporary societal paradigm characterized by efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Eric
Schlossers Fast Food Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001) later expanded this idea of McDonalds restaurants growing to
shape the social organization of choices and expectations in American consumer culture.
Trubek, Amy B. 2008. The taste of place: A cultural journey into terroir. California Studies in Food and Culture. Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press.
Applies the French concept of terroirfoods embodiment of place-based landscapes, peoples, and cultural practicesto food
production initiatives in the United States.
Watson, James L., ed. 1997. Golden arches east: McDonalds in East Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
A key contribution to the globalization of markets and food consumption canon. Looks at how McDonalds restaurants penetrated
several East Asian consumer markets and in turn shaped new cultural practicessuch as learning to stand in line or choosing
bread versus rice for a mealin those countries.
Food Politics
Food systems and politics are shaped by moral, economic, and political concerns. These include the global diffusion of modern
food and culinary styles that favor agribusiness, industrial food production, and fast or mass food consumption; the paradox of
simultaneous food abundance and insecurity; concerns about knowledge, risk, and the power and reach of corporate interests in
food production; and the safety and environmental impacts of the foods being produced and the welfare of the animals used in their
production. Scholars and activists alike well recognize the ways interconnected politics and markets can both hinder and assist the
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institutionalization of these practices and goals.

CONTESTED PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
Research perspectives reveal the contested nature of food politics and food systems and the sometimes contradictory policies that
such systems condone. Nestle 2007 is considered a bible of food studies scholarship and is an important starting point for
researchers interested in how American national food policy is shaped and has affected markets. Belasco 2007 illustrates how the
food industry has transformed in response to and capitalized on 1960s countercultural challenges and social claims. Lien and
Nerlich 2004 is a collection of chapters that broadens sociological ideas about food politics to both international contexts and
arenas not traditionally considered political. Globalization and neoliberal market structures are also implicated in rising food costs
and food insecurity, as shown in Carolan 2011. Criticisms of production systems often incorporate suggested alternatives for social
reform (Allen 1993, Lyson 2004). Attention has also been paid to the institutionalization of reformist models (Howard 2009) and
cooptation of these models by conventional food systems (Guthman 2004), showing that contests over food systems do not cease
and demonstrating the need for future social and sociological research.
Allen, Patricia, ed. 1993. Food for the future: Conditions and contradictions of sustainability. New York: Wiley.
A landmark volume that discusses the goals, values, institutional structures, and obstacles engaged with the concept of
sustainability (a ubiquitous term in the lexicons of the sociology of food) as an agenda for social reform.
Belasco, Warren J. 2007. Appetite for change: How the counterculture took on the food industry. 2d ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
Univ. Press.
This important book establishes strong historical connections among 1960s countercultural social movements, developments in
activism concerning health and consumption, and organized resistance to the American mass food industry. The work also
established Belasco as a key voice in the field of food studies.
Carolan, Michael. 2011. The real cost of cheap food. London: Earthscan.
A rich account of the invisible costs in the global food system of the early 21st century, including political, economic, cultural, health,
and environmental impacts.
Guthman, Julie. 2004. Agrarian dreams: The paradox of organic farming in California. California Studies in Critical Human
Geography. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
A scholarly challenge to the positive virtues attached to organic food and farming. Analyzes how the California organic industry (the
largest in the United States) has become corporate and industrial, mirroring conventional production systems. Also a solid critique
of the agrarian ideal of organic in relation to labor and land issues.
Howard, Philip H. 2009. Consolidation in the North American organic food processing sector, 1997 to 2007. International
Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 16.1: 1330.
Alongside the National Organic Program (1990) and institutionalization of a national organic certification label by the United States
Department of Agriculture (2002) came significant market shifts in production and distribution. Howards research offers an
important perspective on inequalities, consumer interest, and market consolidation in the food system.
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Lien, Marianne Elisabeth, and Brigitte Nerlich, eds. 2004. The politics of food. Oxford: Berg.
Chapters consider the diverse interests and regulatory frameworks enrolled as food items make their way from producer to
consumer. Food for thought includes the role of the consumer-citizen in managing risk and safety, transnational activism, and the
implementation of global standards.
Lyson, Thomas A. 2004. Civic agriculture: Reconnecting farm, food, and community. Civil Society: Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives. Medford, MA: Tufts Univ. Press.
Oft-cited by development and community sociologists. Chronicles how agricultural production in the 20th century followed pathways
similar to those of other industrial sectors in terms of commodification, consolidation, and closures. Argues for civic agriculture as
a way to reembed food and agricultural production in community-based systems, such as farmers markets and communitysupported agriculture.
Nestle, Marion. 2007. Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health. Rev. ed. California Studies in
Food and Culture. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
This book examines and deconstructs the evolution of federal food and dietary policy in the 20th-century United States from
debates over federal dietary guidelines to the influence of professional lobbies to food choices offered in schools. Originally
published in 2002.
SOCIAL CHANGE, ACTIVISM, AND ETHICAL CONSUMERISM
The early 2000s witnessed growth in scholarly interest and debates concerning alternative food production, movements, and
consumption, mirroring the increased groundswell of initiatives, including the local food movement, farmers markets, organic and air
trade certification programs, urban and community-based agriculture, and food justice imperatives (Hinrichs and Lyson 2007;
Wright and Middendorf 2008; Goodman, et al. 2012). Activists emerged at multiple institutional levels and mobilized around a
variety of issues, from vegetarianism (Maurer 2002) to schools (Morgan and Sonnino 2010) to international biotechnology
(Schurman and Munro 2010). Connections to issues of social inequality and food justice pervade this scholarship, for example,
Raynolds, et al. 2007 and Alkon and Agyeman 2011. Their supporters often implicate consumers choices in framing these
initiatives as solutions to social problems and impacts caused by agricultures industrialization and globalization and related
government policies.
Alkon, Alison Hope, and Julian Agyeman, eds. 2011. Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability. Food, Health,
and the Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Combines insights from environmental justice scholars, critical race theorists, and food studies scholars to advance arguments on
how race and class inequalities have shaped, pervaded, and been institutionalized within the food system and within efforts to
improve it.
Goodman, David, E. Melanie DuPuis, and Michael K. Goodman. 2012. Alternative food networks: Knowledge, practice, and
politics. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Offers a theoretically rich and critical review of the growth of alternative food production-consumption networks and relationships
between food and environmental activism in the United States and western Europe.
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Hinrichs, C. Clare, and Thomas A. Lyson, eds. 2007. Remaking the North American food system: Strategies for
sustainability. Our Sustainable Future. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
Discusses interest in and efforts to create alternative food production and provisioning systems in ways that affect social,
environmental, and economic development conditions for food producers.
Maurer, Donna. 2002. Vegetarianism: Movement or moment? Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.
One of the few sociological books on vegetarianism as a collective identity and social movement.
Morgan, Kevin, and Roberta Sonnino. 2010. The school food revolution: Public food and the challenge of sustainable
development. London: Earthscan.
Broadens contemporary debates about food provisioning in schools as social institutions across a variety of transnational sites with
an eye toward sustainability and community engagement. Also examines the United Nations school food program in developing
countries.
Raynolds, Laura T., Douglas L. Murray, and John Wilkinson, eds. 2007. Fair trade: The challenges of transforming
globalization. London: Routledge.
A straightforward synthesis of fair trades growth as a movement, a market, and a certification labeling system promoted by
alternative globalization initiatives to create better conditions for the producers of certain foods (such as coffee) in the global South
and to construct moral value for consumers in the global North.
Schurman, Rachel, and William A. Munro. 2010. Fighting for the future of food: Activists versus agribusiness in the
struggle over biotechnology. Social Movements, Protest, and Contention 35. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Historicizes and details the interplay of social movements, culture, and politics in controversies over genetically modified (GM) food.
Compares how the lifeworlds of anti-GM activists and biotechnology industry members shape their organizational strategies and
opportunities and ultimately the creation of (and resistance to) policy. Lucid analysis of a complex subject.
Wright, Wynne, and Gerad Middendorf, eds. 2008. The fight over food: Producers, consumers, and activists challenge the
global food system. Rural Studies. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press.
A collection of essays and case studies by leading rural sociologists of agriculture and food that uses the theme of agency to
analyze mainstream and alternative food systems, viewing them as contemporary arenas of struggle over topics such as animal
welfare, genetic engineering, and social justice.
LAST MODIFIED: 08/26/2013

DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199756384-0072
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