Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat - Softcover

"This is a very appealing, nicely illustrated and well presented introduction to food and eating from the perspective of cultural geography and drawing upon contemporary cultural studies. It is written with verve, contains a splendid mix of examples and anecdotes, and is impressively up-to-date in its command of a copious range of recent sources.... "Consuming Geographies is amusing, engaging and readable and is the book I would currently recommend as the most stimulating introduction to the cultural aspects of contemporary food consumption." -"The Sociological Review ..." perceptive and creative ... David Bell and Gil Valentine address a number of issues currently debated in the scholarly literature, from the formation of personal and collective identities to the construction of space and place. Because they consider these through the everyday practices of eating, the authors are more successful than most in making their insights accessible ... Read this book." -"Annals of the Association of American Geographers

Food occupies a seemingly mundane position in all our lives, yet the ways we think about shopping, cooking and eating are actually intensely reflexive. The daily pick and mix of our eating habits is one way we experience spatial scale. From the relationship of our food intake to our body-shape, to the impact of our tastes upon global food-production regimes, we all read food consumption as a practice which impacts on our sense of place.
Drawing on anthropological, sociological and cultural readings of food consumption, as well as empirical material on shopping, cooking, food technology and the food media, this book demonstrates the importance of space and place in identity formation. We all think place (and) identity through food - we are where we eat!