Consuming Geographies

by David J. Bell, Gill Valentine

Food occupies a seemingly mundane position in all our lives, yet the ways we think about shopping, cooking and eating are actually intensely reflexive. The daily pick and mix of our eating habits is one way we experience spatial scale. From the relationship of our food intake to our body-shape, to the impact of our tastes upon global food-production regimes, we all read food consumption as a practice which impacts on our sense of place.
Drawing on anthropological, sociological and cultural readings of food consumption, as well as empirical material on shopping, cooking, food technology and the food media, this book demonstrates the importance of space and place in identity formation. We all think place (and) identity through food - we are where we eat!

Genres: Food, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published May 29, 1997

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explains that most geographers have explored the landscape of food through its production. They explore its landscapes of consumption. The scale of the book increases as it moves from body to city to region to nation to planet (what does it mean to eat like a good global citizen?). The book is interested in how food consumption constructs place-based identity - with the body defined as much as a place as region and nation.

The abstract for the entire book as well as the paragraph abstracts at the start of each chapter were helpful. I liked the structure of the book as it shifted scale as well as the book's rectangular shape. Within the chapters, the heavy emphasis on other scholars' writings confounded the text's readability.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

First full foray into a dense Geog book since I'm always stuck with History. There are quite a number of sociological/anthropological theories referenced throughout the book, but it is quite readable as Bell and Valentine always make close links to case studies and examples. The choice of using geographical scales to analyse the issue of food also makes the book eminently readable. Overall quite an illuminating book : )