Fast Food/Slow Food: The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System

by Richard Wilk Indiana University (Editor), Cathy Banwell (Contribution by), Theodore C. Bestor (Contribution by), Michael L. Burton (Contribution by), Jane Dixon (Contribution by)

Overview

Wilk and his colleagues draw upon their own international field experience to examine how food systems are changing around the globe. The authors offer a cultural perspective that is mising in other economic and developmental studies, and provide rich ethnographic data on markets, industrial production, and food economies. This new book will appeal to professionals in economic and environmental anthropology: economic development, agricultural economics, consumer behavior, nutritional sciences, environmental sustainability, and globalization studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759109148
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	08/25/2006
Series:	Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph Series , #24
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.42(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Richard Wilk is chair of the anthropology department at Indiana University and past president of the Society for Economic Anthropology. He hwas conducted most of his fieldwork in Belize and the United States. His publications included:The Environment in Anthropology (with Nora Haenn, 2001 New York University Press);Economies and Cultures: Foundations of Economic Anthropology (1996 Westview Press). With Josiah Heyman, he is co-editor of the AltaMira Series in Globalization and the Environment.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Part I: Introduction Chapter 2 Chapter 1: Food at Moderate Speeds Chapter 3 Chapter 2: From Wild Weeds to Artisanal Cheese Part 4 Part II: Whole Food Economies: Breaking Down Dichotomies Chapter 5 Chapter 3: Building Lives with Food: Production, Circulation, and Consumption of Food in Yap Chapter 6 Chapter 4: Food for the Malian Middle Class: An Invisible Cuisine Chapter 7 Chapter 5: Taco Bell, Maseca, and Slow Food: A Postmodern Apocalypse for Mexico's Peasant Cuisine? Chapter 8 Chapter 6: From Hunger Foods to Heritage Foods: Challenges to Food Localization in Lao PDR Chapter 9 Chapter 7: Tasting the Worlds of Yesterday and Today: Culinary Tourism and Nostalgia Foods in Post-Soviet Russia Part 10 Part III: The Contradictions of Industrial Food Chapter 11 Chapter 8: Kaiten-zushi and Konbini: Japanese Food Culture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Chapter 12 Chapter 9: Rice Ball Rivalries: Japanese Convenience Stores and the Appetite of Late Capitalism Chapter 13 Chapter 10: Global Tastes, Local Contexts: An Ethnographic Account of Fast Food Expansion in San Fernando City, the Philippines Part 14 Part IV: Transforming Markets and Reconnecting with Consumers Chapter 15 Chapter 11: From the Bottom-Up: The Global Expansion of Chinese Begetable Trade for New York City Markets Chapter 16 Chapter 12: The Role of Ideology in New Mexico's CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Organizations: Conflicting Visions between Growers and Members Chapter 17 Chapter 13: Artisanal Cheese and Economies of Sentiment in New England Chapter 18 Chapter 14: Fast and Slow Food in the Fast Lane: Automobility and the Australian Diet Chapter 19 Chapter 15: 'Just Java': Roasting Fair Trade Coffee

Editorial Reviews

From the standpoint of economic anthropology, the papers in this fascinating volume look at the simultaneous intersection of the global and the local in diverse food cultures around the globe, from Mali to Japan, Mexico to Laos. Challenging a homogeneous model of food commodification and dietary globalization, papers explore how people in diverse cultures balance contradictory culinary forces by localizing fast food, integrating modern foods into culturally meaningful diets, revitalizing dying food practices, and resisting the loss of rich traditions centered on foodways. Papers consider topics as diverse as fast food adoption in the Philippines, the Chinese vegetable trade in New York City, community supported agriculture in New Mexico, artisanal cheese production in New England, and the co-evolution of food and cars in Australia. Lively writing, rich detail, and insightful perspectives make this a valuable book for students and scholars all across the social sciences.

Carole Counihan

This is an excellent book....Richard Wilk's introduction to the volume makes a series of clear conceptual points indentifying how economic anthropology and food studies today contribute to each other.

.n Anthropologist

Setting out to explore the range of food markets, Fast Food/Slow Food reveals global and corporate connections in the slow food movement and local and regional variations of the fast food industry. More than that, this collection looks at food in the middle, where Russian culinary tours meet Lao survival food in trendy American chefs' offerings, ancient Japanese fast foods enter Seven Eleven and transform it, and food of moderate pace is consumed in everyday spaces. Wilk and the contributors make accessible for the rest of us how economic anthropology pulls back a layer in our conversation about transnational food and foodways.

Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt

[There] is an important momentum of compelling case studies here to make the argument plain to see that the simplistic slow/fast divide should be abandoned.

Journal Of The Royal Anthropological Institute

Fast Food/Slow Food provides a provocative series of scholarly essays that address some of the myriad issues concerning food and culture in today's world. We are at an important crossroad in the way we eat and grow food both locally and globally. We need to think about our relationship to food and how we have gotten to where we are as well as where we need to go in the future. This book raises issues that need to be taken very seriously and discussed at all levels of society.

Antonia Demas PhD

[There] is an important momentum of compelling case studies here to make the argument plain to see that the simplistic slow/fast divide should be abandoned.

June 2009 Journal Of The Royal Anthropological Institute

Setting out to explore the range of food markets, Fast Food/Slow Food reveals global and corporate connections in the slow food movement and local and regional variations of the fast food industry. More than that, this collection looks at food in the middle, where Russian culinary tours meet Lao survival food in trendy American chefs' offerings, ancient Japanese fast foods enter Seven Eleven and transform it, and food of moderate pace is consumed in everyday spaces. Wilk and the contributors make accessible for the rest of us how economic anthropology pulls back a layer in our conversation about transnational food and foodways.--Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt, Department of American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

From the standpoint of economic anthropology, the papers in this fascinating volume look at the simultaneous intersection of the global and the local in diverse food cultures around the globe, from Mali to Japan, Mexico to Laos. Challenging a homogeneous model of food commodification and dietary globalization, papers explore how people in diverse cultures balance contradictory culinary forces by localizing fast food, integrating modern foods into culturally meaningful diets, revitalizing dying food practices, and resisting the loss of rich traditions centered on foodways. Papers consider topics as diverse as fast food adoption in the Philippines, the Chinese vegetable trade in New York City, community supported agriculture in New Mexico, artisanal cheese production in New England, and the co-evolution of food and cars in Australia. Lively writing, rich detail, and insightful perspectives make this a valuable book for students and scholars all across the social sciences.--Carole Counihan, Professor of Anthropology at Millersville U

This is an excellent book....Richard Wilk's introduction to the volume makes a series of clear conceptual points indentifying how economic anthropology and food studies today contribute to each other.--. "American Anthropologist, March 2008 "

From the Publisher

This is an excellent book....Richard Wilk's introduction to the volume makes a series of clear conceptual points indentifying how economic anthropology and food studies today contribute to each other.

American Anthropologist, March 2008 - .

Fast Food/Slow Food provides a provocative series of scholarly essays that address some of the myriad issues concerning food and culture in today's world. We are at an important crossroad in the way we eat and grow food both locally and globally. We need to think about our relationship to food and how we have gotten to where we are as well as where we need to go in the future. This book raises issues that need to be taken very seriously and discussed at all levels of society.

Antonia Demas

This is an excellent book....Richard Wilk's introduction to the volume makes a series of clear conceptual points indentifying how economic anthropology and food studies today contribute to each other.

American Anthropologist - March 2008

This is an excellent book....Richard Wilk's introduction to the volume makes a series of clear conceptual points indentifying how economic anthropology and food studies today contribute to each other.
— March 2008

American Anthropologist

This is an excellent book....Richard Wilk's introduction to the volume makes a series of clear conceptual points indentifying how economic anthropology and food studies today contribute to each other.

American Anthropologist, March 2008 - .