In this third edition of Food and Culture : A Reader , our aim mirrors that of the previous two editions: to provide a comprehensive introduction to the field that contains classic foundational pieces, a range of outstanding articles reflecting diverse perspectives and topics, and cutting edge new work. This task has become more challenging with each edition as the field has exploded over the sixteen years since the first edition appeared in 1997. To include new work and keep the Reader current and lively, we had to omit some pieces that we love, but we hope that the new articles will excite our readers and more than make up for what we dropped.
In this new edition, we have kept almost all of the foundational pieces but cut the article by De Certeau and Giard to include a selection from Pierre Bourdieu. We have modified the section on food consumption and the body by reducing the number of articles on anorexia nervosa, expanding the focus on obesity, and including more diverse approaches to the body. This edition of the Reader maintains a broad geographical and multicultural coverage with articles on Euro-Americans, African Americans, and Latinos as well as on Japanese, Greek, Italian, Thai, South Asian, native American, Mexican, and Chinese food cultures. It continues to explore enduring topics of food and gender, consumption and meaning, globalization, and political economy, but introduces new topics with articles on farmers’ markets, community food security, the complexities of the organic food market, democracy and food justice, cooking skill and its meanings, gender in food television, and packaged foods in the South Asian diaspora.
Since the first edition of the book, we have been privileged to participate in the creation of the sumptuous covers. From the multihued noodles and fruit of the first edition, to the sensuous chocolate dessert and colorful spices of the second, we have endeavored to combine foods like fish and tomatoes with culturally constructed products like sandwiches. We chose the Thai fruit and vegetable carving for this edition’s cover to underscore the skill and effort involved in transforming foods into edible works of art, and the important place of the visual aspects of food in the anthropology of the senses.
We are pleased to publish this third edition not only in standard book format but also as an electronic book. For instructors who adopt the book in courses, we have also prepared test questions which are available on the book’s website. We have tried to pay more attention to temporal context in this edition, giving the original date of publication at the beginning of each article, to draw more attention to the scholarly context in which these papers were written.