This book explores contemporary families as sites of consumption, examining the changing contexts of family life, where new forms of family are altering how family life is practised and produced, and addressing key social issues – childhood obesity, alchohol and drug addiction, social networking, viral marketing – that put pressure on families as the social, economic and regulatory environments of consumption change.

Consuming Desires examines new forms of marriage emerging in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in reaction, in part, to the governments' increasing attempts to control sexuality with shari'a law.

How often does a book come along that will change your life? The Surprising Power of Family Meals will. Digesting its information and implementing even a few of its helpful suggestions will benefit every member of your family in deep and lasting ways. The Surprising Power of Family Meals is the first book to take a complete look at a ritual so common it flies beneath our radar screens. Virtually universal a generation ago, family supper has undergone a striking transformation. No longer honored by society as a time of day that must be set aside, some families see it as little more than a quaint relic. But others are beginning to recognize it as a lifeline - a way to connect with their loved ones on a regular basis and to get more enjoyment out of family life. The Surprising Power of Family Meals presents stories, studies, and arguments from the fields of psychology, education, nutrition, family therapy, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and religion. It provides examples of families and communities around North America responding creatively to the pressures of a 24/7 world to incorporate memories of their own childhood meals and to share strategies for taking what is best from our past and transforming it to meet current needs.

Provides an overview of what families around the world eat by featuring portraits of thirty families from twenty-four countries with a week's supply of food.

"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology." —Nature A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests. Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.