Food and Society: Principles and Paradoxes

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

This timely and engaging text offers students a social perspective on food, food practices, and the modern food system. It engages readers’ curiosity by highlighting several how food is both mundane and sacred, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary global era, comes from everywhere but nowhere in particular. With a social constructionist framework, the book provides an empirically rich, multi-faceted, and coherent introduction to this fascinating field.

Each chapter begins with a vivid case study, proceeds through a rich discussion of research insights, and ends with discussion questions and suggested resources. Chapter topics include food’s role in socialization, identity, work, health and social change, as well as food marketing and the changing global food system. In synthesizing insights from diverse fields of social inquiry, the book addresses issues of culture, structure, and social inequality throughout.

Written in a lively style, this book will be both accessible and revealing to beginning and intermediate students alike.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Academic

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2012

Reviews

[Angelica Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Masters student in Food Sustainability, this book was a great primer to the complex sociological, historical, geographical and economic factors that have impacted our food system and brought us to where we are today. Case studies and side stories make it interesting, approachable and easily shareable for non-academics in this field.

[Alicoluk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Food & Society describes our "foodways", which are the elements that affect how we eat, why we eat, and what we eat. These factors are not only biological and geographical. Book also describes how governments, media, and culture affect our choice of food consumption. As an example, media and food corporations can manipulate our choices by advertisement or placing the more desired items at the middle shelf (which is easily accessible). Book also describes that even health guidelines by the US government not only follow the well being of their citizens. "Dietary guidelines ar political compromises between what science tells us about nutrition and health and what is good for the food industry." Overall it was a great book to learn about one of the most important things for human beings and society, foods, and how, why we utilize them.

[Hadley Weyerich · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

August 20, 2015

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

Initial thoughts: If I were to pitch this book as coursework material for university, I'd say it's best suited for freshmen or sophomores. The content is well-organised, concise and very clear. However, those who know their sociological theories and frameworks can figure out the analytical parts themselves, as long as they know the current state of affairs in the food and agricultural industries.

Either way, I still learnt a fair bit of new things, even though I had already covered half the content in sociology modules related to media and globalisation during my undergraduate days. I think the text is also easy enough to understand for anyone who want to read Food and Society to expand their general knowledge.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good overview of modern food systems and how we grow, process, distribute, choose, prepare, and eat our food. The authors write in a clear and engaging manner about food as identity, culture, branding, industrialization, sharing, social change.

[Catherine Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for a Sociology 101 class and it was beginner-appropriate, but still interesting and well-organized.
I learned a lot from this book and it wasn't hard to learn from, which is a real blessing!

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this book in my summer class and found it very enlightening. It covers pretty much every current social issue connected to food. It is well - researched and shows the social complexities in issues related to what we eat and how it is produced.