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 paradoxes: 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.

AMY E. GUPTILL is Associate Professor of Sociology at The College at Brockport, State University of New York.

DENISE A. COPELTON is Associate Professor of Sociology at The College at Brockport, State University of New York.

BETSY LUCAL is Full Professor of Sociology at Indiana University South Bend.

Chapter 1 Bread and Butter: Principles and Paradoxes in the Study of Food
Chapter 2 Food and Identity: Fitting in and Standing Out
Chapter 3 Food as Spectacle: The Hard Work of Leisure
Chapter 4 Nutrition and Health: Good to Eat, Hard to Stomach
Chapter 5 Branding and Marketing: Governing the Sovereign Consumer
Chapter 6 Industrialization: The High Costs of Cheap Food
Chapter 7 Global Food: From Everywhere and Nowhere
Chapter 8 Food Access: Surplus and Scarcity
Chapter 9 Food and Social Change: The Value of Values