The authors contemplate the origins, architecture and commercial growth of wayside eateries in the US over the past 100 years. Fast Food examines the impact of the automobile on the restaurant business and offers an account of roadside dining.

An in-depth look at Black food and the challenges it faces today For Black Americans, the food system is broken. When it comes to nutrition, Black consumers experience an unjust and inequitable distribution of resources. Black Food Matters examines these issues through in-depth essays that analyze how Blackness is contested through food, differing ideas of what makes our sustenance “healthy,” and Black individuals’ own beliefs about what their cuisine should be. Primarily written by nonwhite scholars, and framed through a focus on Black agency instead of deprivation, the essays here showcase Black communities fighting for the survival of their food culture. The book takes readers into the real world of Black sustenance, examining animal husbandry practices in South Carolina, the work done by the Black Panthers to ensure food equality, and Black women who are pioneering urban agriculture. These essays also explore individual and community values, the influence of history, and the ongoing struggle to meet needs and affirm Black life. A comprehensive look at Black food culture and the various forms of violence that threaten the future of this cuisine, Black Food Matters centers Blackness in a field that has too often framed Black issues through a white-centric lens, offering new ways to think about access, privilege, equity, and justice. Contributors: Adam Bledsoe, U of Minnesota; Billy Hall; Analena Hope Hassberg, California State Polytechnic U, Pomona; Yuson Jung, Wayne State U; Kimberly Kasper, Rhodes College; Tyler McCreary, Florida State U; Andrew Newman, Wayne State U; Gillian Richards-Greaves, Coastal Carolina U; Monica M. White, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Brian Williams, Mississippi State U; Judith Williams, Florida International U; Psyche Williams-Forson, U of Maryland, College Park; Willie J. Wright, Rutgers U.

This textbook equips students with the ability to analyze and think critically about contemporary food topics. A thorough introduction to the sociology of food and eating, the book also acts as a primer to the discipline of sociology more generally. Chapters start with a 'common sense' assumption about food which students frequently encounter in their own lives or in the mass media. Topics include family meals, ethnic cuisines, cooking skills and convenience foods, eating out, food waste, and 'overpackaging'. Anne Murcott shows how systematic academic research approaches can allow students to move beyond 'conventional wisdoms' to examine sociological perspectives on food and eating. Key sociological concerns such as class, gender, age, ethnicity, power and identity are also introduced, accompanied by a wide range of examples from around the globe. By the end, readers will be able to think more critically and to apply sociological approaches to questions about food and society. Introducing the Sociology of Food and Eating is an essential introductory textbook for students in sociology and food studies. It provides readers with a solid basis for success in their studies - and with a new understanding of their own attitudes to food and eating.

Black food, black space, black agency -- Come to think of it, we were pretty self-sufficient: race, segregation, and food access in historical context -- There ain't nothing in Deanwood: navigating nothingness and the unsafeway -- What is our culture? I don't even know: the role of nostalgia and memory in evaluating contemporary food access -- He's had that store for years: the historical and symbolic value of community market -- We will not perish; we will flourish: community gardening, self-reliance, and refusal -- Black lives and black food futures.

Winner of the 2013 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association Winner of the 2013 Association for the Study of Food and Society Book Award Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series The act of eating is both erotic and violent, as one wholly consumes the object being eaten. At the same time, eating performs a kind of vulnerability to the world, revealing a fundamental interdependence between the eater and that which exists outside her body. Racial Indigestion explores the links between food, visual and literary culture in the nineteenth-century United States to reveal how eating produces political subjects by justifying the social discourses that create bodily meaning. Combing through a visually stunning and rare archive of children’s literature, architectural history, domestic manuals, dietetic tracts, novels and advertising, Racial Indigestion tells the story of the consolidation of nationalist mythologies of whiteness via the erotic politics of consumption. Less a history of commodities than a history of eating itself, the book seeks to understand how eating became a political act, linked to appetite, vice, virtue, race and class inequality and, finally, the queer pleasures and pitfalls of a burgeoning commodity culture. In so doing, Racial Indigestion sheds light on contemporary “foodie” culture’s vexed relationship to nativism, nationalism and race privilege. For more, visit the author's tumblr page: http://racialindigestion.tumblr.com

This popular and engaging text, now revised in a second edition, offers readers a social perspective on food, food practices, and the modern food system. It engages readers' curiosity by highlighting several paradoxes: how food is both individual and social, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary global era, comes from everywhere but nowhere in particular. With updates and enhancements throughout, the new edition provides an empirically deep, multifaceted, 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, health and social change, as well as food marketing and the changing global food system. The new edition gives more focused attention to labor (both paid and unpaid) in all aspects of the 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 continue to be both accessible and revealing to beginning and intermediate students alike.