Food and Cultural Studies

What and how we eat are two of the most persistent choices we face in everyday life. Whatever we decide on though, and however mundane our decisions may seem, they will be inscribed with information both about ourselves and about our positions in the world around us. Yet, food has only recently become a significant and coherent area of inquiry for cultural studies and the social sciences. Food and Cultural Studies re-examines the interdisciplinary history of food studies from a cultural studies framework, from the semiotics of Barthes and the anthropology of Levi-Strauss to Elias' historical analysis and Bourdieu's work on the relationship between food, consumption and cultural identity. The authors then go on to explore subjects as diverse as food and nation, the gendering of eating in, the phenomenon of TV chefs, the ethics of vegetarianism and food, risk and moral panics.