Sociology of Food

Specifics

100

• In the 19th century, this fertilizer was extracted from pits in Peru, mostly by Chinese men (called “coolies”), for use in European countries.

• WHAT IS GUANO?

200

• These ‘new’ forms of food retailing are said to invigorate urban spaces and activate street life; but they are also often associated with gentrification.

• WHAT ARE FOOD TRUCKS?

300

This concept calls attention to the local climate, soil, and other environmental factors connected to a specific agricultural product.  Sometimes used to market food products, such as wine.

• WHAT IS TERROIR?

400

Researchers have argued that that these urban spaces may foster community and support knowledge creation. Cumbers et al. contend they are places where the ongoing social tensions between neoliberal commodification processes and alternative sets of social relations are played out, though never completely resolved.”

• WHAT ARE COMMUNITY GARDENS?

500

• This term, used by the Slow Food Movement, represents an imagined consumer who is “someone who adds ecological concerns onto a continuously trained aesthetic appreciation of food.”

WHAT IS AN ECO-GASTRONOME?

Terms and Concepts 1

100

• This term describes what occurs when the social relations involved in the production of an item are invisible; the focus is totally on the end product.

• WHAT IS COMMODITY FETISHISM?

200

• This process allows the researcher to look for themes and create categories to summarize qualitative data and build theory.

• WHAT IS QUALITATIVE CODING?

300

• A set of ideas and policies that typically includes, among other things, deregulation, privatization, “free-trade” and reductions in government spending.

• WHAT IS NEOLIBERALISM?

400

• Some sociologists (e.g. Sbicca) contrast two types of social movement activism.  The first is a market-based vision (farm to fork, ethical purchasing, etc). This term expresses a different (opposite or alternative) type of change.

• WHAT IS STRUCTURAL CHANGE? (OR WHAT IS CONFRONTATIONAL ACTIVISM?)

500

• A researcher analyzing a food product focuses on the ways in which race/ethnicity, gender, and class are all important to a cultural meaning of this product.  This term describes the researcher’s approach.

• WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?

Terms and Concepts 2

100

• This term describes how high-status social groups have turned away from “snobbish exclusion” and towards “cultural eclecticism” that includes both "highbrow" and lowbrow" tastes.

WHAT IS OMNIVOROUSNESS?

200

• This Marxian concept is meant to capture the fact of a transfer of energy, especially between rural and urban areas.  For example, industrialized farming created a need for fertilizer because food and animal waste could no longer be easily (re)used to fertilize land.

• WHAT IS METABOLIC RIFT?

300

• A set of ideas and policies that typically includes deregulation, privatization, “free-trade” and reductions in government spending.

• WHAT IS NEOLIBERALISM?

400

• This term is meant to express “an institutionalized system of knowledge and thought that organizes populations, and shapes the parameters of what thoughts are popular and even possible” (Johnston and Bauman 2014: 37).

• WHAT IS DISCOURSE?

500

• This term describes what occurs when the social relations involved in the production of an item are invisible; the focus is totally on the end product.

• WHAT IS COMMODITY FETISHISM?

Theories

100

• This theory focuses on the fact that European colonialism caused global inequalities that persist today.

• WHAT IS WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY?

200

• This type of analysis can reveal how processes of production are geographically and economically linked.

• WHAT IS COMMODITY CHAIN ANALYSIS?

300

• According to this theory developed by Garrett Hardin, when people manage resources in common the resource will be depleted or spoiled because people typically act in their own self interest.

• WHAT IS THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS?

400

In Marxian theory, these concepts distinguish between the material uses to which the object can be put (i.e., the human needs it fulfills) versus the abstract value of an item (i.e., its value for trading purposes).

WHAT IS USE VALUE AND EXCHANGE VALUE?

500

• This framework imagines an arena of social action as a “playing field”, where diverse actors “play the game” (each game with its specific rules) with differing amounts of cultural, social, and economic capital.
• 
  

• WHAT IS BOURDIEU’S CONCEPT OF FIELDS?

Course Readings

100

• In “Authenticity in America: Class Distinction in Potato Chip Advertising”, Freedman and Jurafsky analyzed potato chip packaging using theory developed by this influential French social theorist. 

• WHO IS PIERRE BOURDIEU?

200

• In “Like an Extra Virgin” Anne Meneley discusses how this particular geographic area is “defined by food” in both scientific as well as gustatory discourses.

• WHAT IS THE MEDITERRANEAN?

300

• According to Peggy Barlett, these are two main types of strategies used by campus alternative food initiatives.

WHAT ARE METRICS-BASED AND RELATIONAL STRATEGIES?

400

• In “Do You See What I See”, Carolan argues that we need a new way of seeing to help make way for more sustainable farming practices. He introduces this term to represent how some aspects of food production are not readily revealed by direct perception.

• WHAT ARE EPISTEMIC BARRIERS?

500

• In “Fixing our Global Food System” Peter Rosset argues that this type of farm is more ecologically sound, produces more food per unit of land, and helps create healthier economic systems for local communities.

WHAT ARE FAMILY FARMS?