Sociologies of food and eating

This chapter begins with a brief comment on its place in a handbook of the sociology of health/medicine. Noting it is not intended as a comprehensive literature review and is confined to English language literature, the chapter continues by identifying the ‘pull’ to applied research, indicates its academic ‘infrastructure’ (i.e. journals, textbooks etc) and notes its longevity. The main body of the chapter opens with a succinct overview of its origins and main foundational scholars before developing a critical discussion of major themes and their current treatment, including observations on omissions and shortcomings. The chapter makes three observations about the field as it stands: it continues to be fragmented; it appears (unduly) heavily angled towards the solution of major food-related societal problems; the scholarly quality is uneven and the work is often - unduly strongly - criticised for being under-theorised and/or poorly conceptualised sociologically. The discussion concludes with note of relatively recent work which has developed almost completely separately from the literature commonly regarded as ‘the sociology of food’.