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"Few things are as important as the food we eat. "Conversations in Food Studies" demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary research through the cross-pollination of disciplinary, epistemological, and methodological perspectives. Widely diverse essays, ranging from the meaning of milk, to the bring-your-own-wine movement, to urban household waste, are the product of collaborating teams of interdisciplinary authors. Readers are invited to engage and reflect on the theories and practices underlying some of the most important issues facing the emerging field of food studies today. Conversations in Food Studies brings to the table thirteen original contributions organized around the themes of representation, governance, disciplinary boundaries, and, finally, learning through food. This collection offers an important and groundbreaking approach to food studies as it examines and reworks the boundaries that have traditionally structured the academy and that underlie much of food studies literature."--

Agro-Food Studies setzen sich integrativ und kritisch mit der Produktion und dem Konsum von Nahrung auseinander. Der Band behandelt die Spannungsfelder Tradition und Moderne, Globalisierung und Regionalisierung, Gesellschaft und Umwelt, Natur und Technik, Kopf und Bauch, Mangel und Überfluss. Die interdisziplinäre Einführung richtet sich an Studierende und Akteure der Zivilgesellschaft.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Doing digital food studies -- Digital methods within the humanities and social sciences -- Digital methods and food studies -- The contribution of this volume -- The chapters of this volume -- Part 1: Textual analysis -- Part 2: Digital ethnography -- Part 3: Users' practices -- Part 4: Digital archives and network analysis -- Future encounters -- References -- Part 1: Textual analysis -- Chapter 2: Textual analysis in digital food studies: New approaches to old methods -- Studying digital food texts -- Textual analysis: Then and now -- Methods for analysing media and digital texts -- Textual "readings" -- Discourse and framing analyses -- Visual analysis -- Content analysis -- Multimethod approaches -- Research design for textual analysis: A practical example -- Key lessons for digital food studies -- Using textual analysis: A how to guide -- Dos and Don'ts -- Now you try -- Questions for reflection -- Ethical considerations -- Further readings -- References -- Chapter 3: Reading celebrity food websites: Poststructural approaches -- Poststructuralism and discourse analysis -- Reading websites as texts -- From discourse to materiality -- Dos and Don'ts -- Now you try -- Questions for reflection -- Ethical considerations -- Further readings -- References -- Chapter 4: Analysing digital food sounds from a textual perspective - A case of champagne (?) -- Introduction -- Digital food sounds -- Reduced listening and iconic signification -- Causal listening and indexical signification -- Semantic listening and symbolic signification -- Key lessons and additional analytical perspectives -- Dos and Don'ts -- Now you try -- Questions for reflection -- Ethical considerations.

Abstract
Introducing a special issue of Matatu titled "South African Food Studies," this essay argues for the importance of food as a lens for understanding contemporary culture and society. More specifically, the essay advocates for recentring Global South contexts—in this case South Africa—in a 'food studies' conversation that has often been dominated by the American academy; it also underscores the vitality of the humanities, qualitative social sciences, and creative arts for transcending reductive 'food security' paradigms often applied in the Global South. The essay first examines the short story "Water No Get Enemy" by South African writer Fred Khumalo, introducing how a focus on food and eating can illuminate globalisation, xenophobia, resource conflict, and environmental change. From here, the authors introduce the evolving field of 'food studies,' then outline the eight academic, personal, and creative pieces that constitute this special issue, all authored by contributors from the African continent. Issues raised include the gendered and queer politics of food, breastmilk, and soil; the ongoing coloniality of neoliberal approaches to food inequality; the burdening of Black bodies; the role of so-called 'ethnic restaurants' in building transnational and multi-ethnic communities; and the heightened stakes of food access during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent contributions to the journal have commendably sought to extend agro‐food studies from production to consumption in line with the consumption turn across the social sciences. In doing so, and inspired by actor‐network theory, exception has been taken to the systems of provision approach to food studies. This approach is defended by suggesting that it has in part been misinterpreted as comprising an extension of agro‐food studies to consumption rather than a general approach to consumption per se applied to food in particular. In addition, the later turn of such agro‐food studies to consumption is shown to continue to lag behind the understanding of the culture of consumption that has evolved over the past decade. A plea is made for more constructive and informed dialogue with the literature on consumption.

"This title is a guide to doing research in the burgeoning field of food studies. Designed for the classroom as well as for the independent scholar, the book details the predominant research methods in the field, provides a series of interactive questions and templates to help guide a project, and includes suggestions for food-specific resources such as archives, libraries and reference works. Interviews with leading scholars in the field and discussions of how the study of food can enhance traditional methods are included. Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods begins with an overview of food studies and research methods followed by a guide to the literature. Four methodological "baskets" representing the major methodologies of the field are explored together with interviews of leading scholars: food history (Ken Albala); ethnographic methods (Carole Counihan); cultural, material, and media studies (Psyche Williams-Forson); and quantitative methods (Jeffrey Sobal). The book concludes with chapters on research ethics, including working with human subjects, and technology tools for research"--Provided by publisher

Abstract: This article explores the contribution of Maxime Rodinson to the thematisation of food in the Social and Human Sciences (SHS), i.e. its recognition as a legitimate object. Rodinson's contribution consists in having created the conditions for the socialisation of food. The focused interest in cookery books, as a source of empirical data, has made it possible to situate food in culinary styles, that is to say not only in physical space, but also in social space. Entry through practices has provided access to what he calls "mass effects" that affect society at large. Thus, it has been possible to sociologise the issue by adding to the local, geographical, and cultural locations of food and dishes the consideration of social hierarchies and forms of diffusion, mixing linguistics, history, sociology, anthropology, and geography. Beyond Rodinson's personal trajectory, which from a personal poly-competence promotes a transdisciplinary approach, the thematisation takes place in a historical and epistemological context marked by the opposition between a spiritual Islamology and evolutionary Marxism. This characterises the period preceding the Iranian revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall.Résumé : Cet article étudie la contribution de Maxime Rodinson à la thématisation de l'alimentation dans les Sciences humaines et sociales (SHS), c'est-à-dire à sa reconnaissance comme objet légitime. Son apport consiste à avoir créé les conditions de la sociologisation des aliments. La mise en évidence de l'intérêt des livres de cuisine comme source de données empiriques a permis de situer les aliments dans des styles culinaires, c'est-à-dire non seulement dans l'espace physique, mais également dans l'espace social. L'entrée par les pratiques a donné accès à ce qu'il appelle des « effets de masse » qui touchent la société de façon large. Ainsi a-t-on pu sociologiser la question en ajoutant à la localisation géographique et culturelle des aliments et des mets la prise en compte des hiérarchies sociales et des formes de diffusions, en mêlant linguistique, histoire, sociologie, anthropologie, géographie… Au-delà de la trajectoire personnelle de Rodinson qui, depuis une poly-compétence personnelle, promeut une approche transdisciplinaire, cette thématisation s'opère dans un contexte historique et épistémologique marqué par l'opposition entre une islamologie spirituelle et le marxisme évolutionniste qui caractérise la période qui précède la révolution iranienne et la chute du mur de Berlin.

In this article, we propose a critical framework for labor-sensitive food studies. First, we review recent food studies scholarship on agriculture, which leans heavily toward studies of alternative and small-farmer agriculture. We then overview different analytical and theoretical framings dominant in the study of labor and agriculture in the Americas, tracing work from anthropological analyses of peasant and plantation agriculture, to cultural ecologies of smallholders, to American agrarianism, and finally to studies of commodity chains and the labor process. In the review's penultimate section, we curate scholarship that merges macro-level political economic analysis with detailed narrative and interpretive inquiry into the lives of laborers. We aim for this review to provide groundwork for future intersectional food studies research that is sensitive to the lived experience of waged labor. In our conclusion, we argue for further theoretical and empirical expansion to engage the relationship between labor and food in the twenty-first century.

An alimentary introduction / Robert Ji-Song Ku, Martin F. Manalansan IV, and Anita Mannur -- Cambodian donut shops and the negotiation of identity in Los Angeles / Erin M. Curtis -- Tasting America : the politics and pleasures of school lunch in Hawaiʻi / Christine R. Yano (with Wanda Adams) -- A life cooking for others : the work and migration experiences of a Chinese restaurant worker in New York City, 1920-1946 / Heather R. Lee -- Learning from Los Kogi Angeles : a taco truck and its city / Oliver Wang -- The significance of Hawaiʻi regional cuisine in postcolonial Hawaiʻi / Samuel Hideo Yamashita -- Incarceration, cafeteria style : the politics of the mess hall in the Japanese American incarceration / Heidi Kathleen Kim -- As American as jackrabbit adobo : cooking, eating, and becoming Filipina/o American before World War II / Dawn Bohulano Mabalon -- Lechon with Heinz, Lea & Perrins with Adobo : the American relationship with Filipino food, 1896-1946 / René Alexander Orquiza Jr. -- "Oriental cookery" : devouring Asian and Pacific cuisine during the Cold War / Mark Padoongpatt -- Gannenshoyu or first-year soy sauce? Kikkoman soy sauce and the corporate forgetting of the early Japanese American consumer / Robert Ji-Song Ku -- Twenty-first-century food trucks : mobility, social media, and urban hipness / Lok Siu -- Samsa on Sheepshead Bay : tracing Uzbek foodprints in southern Brooklyn / Zohra Saed -- Apple pie and makizushi : Japanese American women sustaining family and community / Valerie J. Matsumoto -- Giving credit where it is due : Asian American farmers and retailers as food system pioneers / Nina F. Ichikawa -- Beyond authenticity : rerouting the Filipino culinary diaspora / Martin F. Manalansan IV -- Acting Asian American, eating Asian American : the politics of race and food in Don Lee's Wrack and ruin / Jennifer Ho -- Devouring Hawaiʻi : food, consumption, and contemporary art / Margo Machida -- "Love is not a bowl of quinces " : food, desire, and the queer Asian body in Monique Truong's The book of salt / Denise Cruz -- The globe at the table : how Madhur Jaffrey's World vegetarian reconfigures the world / Delores B. Phillips -- Perfection on a plate : readings in the South Asian transnational queer kitchen / Anita Mannur

The study of food and eating draws evidence from many different disciplines using many different methods. This paper argues that this should be viewed positively; the idea that there is one best method, or suite of methods, to which every social scientist should be committed is at odds with both processes of knowledge formation and the complexity of alimentary life. Complex research questions necessitate multiple sources and methods, the greatest challenge being to fashion and to justify an integrated interpretation of different types of data. The paper examines these issues with reference to debates about the use of mixed methods, which have mostly focused on the reconciliation within a single study of quantitative and qualitative data. A broader remit is advocated, paying attention to protocols for integrating multiple methods. The argument is illustrated with reference to the design and analysis of a study which collected evidence about the activity of eating out. The paper speculates about whether deliberate and purposeful use of multiple methods may be a key to generating explanations, and ultimately theories, which transcend disciplinary boundaries.