In this book, available for the first time in paperback, the complexity
and the significance of the foods we eat are analysed from a variety of
perspectives, by sociologists, economists, geographers and
anthropologists. Chapters address a number of intriguing questions: how
do people make judgements about taste? How do such judgements come to be
shared by groups of people? What social and organisational processes
result in foods being certified as of decent or proper quality? How has
dissatisfaction with the food system been expressed? what alternatives
are thought to be possible? The multi-disciplinary analysis of this book
explores many different answers to such questions. The first part of the
book focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues, the second part
considers processes of formal and informal regulation, while the third
part examines social and political responses to industrialised food
production and mass consumption. Qualities of food will be of interest
to researchers and students in all the social science disciplines that
are concerned with food, whether marketing, sociology, cultural studies,
anthropology, human nutrition or economics.