16 October 2024
The 16th October 2024 is World Food Day! As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations explains, “‘Foods’ stands for diversity, nutrition, affordability, accessibility and safety. A greater diversity of nutritious foods should be available in our fields, fishing nets, markets, and on our tables, for the benefit of all.” Read more from their page here.
We would like to highlight three of our book series: Research Methods For Anthropological Studies Of Food And Nutrition, Anthropology Of Food And Nutrition and Food Nutrition And Culture. For more details on these series, scroll down below.
You can also browse our books by subject: Food & Nutrition here, which will include some of our series’ titles.
Latest Titles in Food & Nutrition
Food and Families in the Making
Knowledge Reproduction and Political Economy of Cooking in Morocco
Katharina Graf
“An important contribution to the growing ethnographic literature on cooking and social life, Graf’s Food and Families in the Making stands out for its careful analysis and evocation of the senses (beyond just five), and for its well-developed autoethnography of learning cooking. A must-read for those interested in the social production of taste and in the most up-to-date approaches to sensory ethnography.” • David Sutton Southern Illinois University
Volume 8, Food, Nutrition, and Culture
Read freely available introduction.
Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Edited by Paul Collinson and Helen Macbeth
“This is a valuable addition to the anthropology of food and interdisciplinary food studies. The volume’s contributors analyze a wealth of interesting phenomena from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.” • Giovanni Orlando, Food sustainability consultant
Volume 12, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Read freely available introduction.
The Politics of Children’s Food in Poland
Zofia Boni
“The book provides a detailed and dense study of eating-feeding practices spread among school-age children, their parents and their school environment in post-transitional Poland. The book is very interesting, much needed and refers to the important dimension of late capitalist systems in Central Eastern Europe.” • Tomasz Rakowski, University of Warsaw
Volume 6, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations
Read freely available introduction.
Production, Exchange and Consumption in West African Migration
Maria Abranches
“This ethnographically and theoretically rich volume provides an understanding of how people and their food transform their space. Recommended.” • Choice
Volume 10, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Read freely available introduction.
Labour and Value in Moldovan Winemaking
Daniela Ana
“This is an excellent book, ‘a little gem’, which provides a highly original contribution to both the fields of anthropology of wine and of postsocialist economies by focusing on an under-researched area.” • Marion Demossier, University of Southampton
Volume 9, Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy
Read freely available introduction.
A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples
David E. Sutton
“With writing that is highly readable, clear, and well-paced, this book will appeal to students and scholars alike, especially those studying food and cooking, Greece, and risk, and is an exceptional example of studying food practices for their theoretical bounty.” • Food, Culture & Society
Volume 3, New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations
Read freely available introduction.
Edited by Lieba Faier and Michael J. Hathaway
The matsutake mushroom continues to be a highly sought delicacy, especially in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisine. Matsutake Worlds explores this mushroom through the lens of multi-species encounters centered around the matsutake’s notorious elusiveness. The mushroom’s success, the contributors of this volume argue, cannot be accounted for by any one cultural, social, political, or economic process. Rather, the matsutake mushroom has flourished as the result of a number of different processes and dynamics, culminating in the culinary institution we know today.
Volume 12, Studies in Social Analysis
Read freely available introduction.
Food Production, Health, and the Environment
Edited by Angela N. H. Creager and Jean-Paul Gaudillière
“The editors have brought together enough international work to form a broad picture of changes in the global food system. This is an extremely welcome view of how those changes were received in different places at different times.” • Technology and Culture
Volume 21, Environment in History: International Perspectives
Read freely available introduction.
Foodways and Humanity in an African Town
Arianna Huhn
“The nuanced discussion of the Nyanja concepts of nourishment, as it relates to the dietary quality of vitamina (vitamins) ascribed to certain foods and as dependent on ‘interdependence, cooperative labor, compassion, and moral intelligence’, is thoughtful and challenging…Recommended.” • Choice
Volume 7, Food, Nutrition, and Culture
Read freely available introduction.
Food as National Identity in Catalonia
Venetia Johannes
“Nourishing the Nation: Food as National Identity in Catalonia presents a captivating and compelling ethnographic study centered on Catalonia, exploring nationalist movements and tangible cultural aspects. This book holds immense appeal for students across diverse fields within the social sciences, effectively connecting history, anthropology, and even political science. Furthermore, the book showcases innovation and creativity by employing photo-elicitation as a method in ethnographic research. Despite its theoretical sophistication, the book maintains an approachable and engaging style, making it accessible even to the general public with an interest in understanding Catalonia’s rich history, and how the Catalans’ take pride with their gastronomic tradition.” • Anthropology Book Forum
Volume 44, New Directions in Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Food and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Paul Collinson, Iain Young, Lucy Antal, and Helen Macbeth
“[This book] provides a holistic understanding of food-related activities and behaviour … both theoretical and empirical arguments are covered in a balanced manner. The volume takes cognisance of the ‘minutiae of food experiences’ (p. 19) of people with respect to sustainability, cutting across the globe.” • European Association of Social Anthropologists Journal
Volume 9, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Read freely available introduction.
The Global Story of Terroir
Marion Demossier
“One of the ethnography’s strengths lies in the theoretical frameworks that are used to delve further into the construction of a good that circulates globally and whose value is closely associated with a heritage site. Another is the author’s long-term engagement with the region: this insider status offers a unique perspective on groups of people who are not easy to access… I would recommend this book for both graduate and undergraduate teaching. The chapters stand well on their own and the volume as a whole offers an excellent example of long-term ethnographic research.” • JRAI
Volume 43, New Directions in Anthropology
Read freely available introduction.
Open Access
Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily
Theodoros Rakopoulos
“Rakopoulos admirably delineates the entwined positionalities of mafia, anti-mafia, workers, administrators, and the state.” • American Anthropologist
Volume 4, The Human Economy
Read freely available introduction, and more with Open Access.
Berghahn Books Food Series
Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition
Editors: Janet Chrzan, University of Pennsylvania and John A. Brett, University of Colorado Denver
Published in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) and in Collaboration with Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin
The dramatic increase in all things food in popular and academic fields during the last two decades has generated a diverse and dynamic set of approaches for understanding the complex relationships and interactions that determine how people eat and how diet affects culture. These volumes offer a comprehensive reference for students and established scholars interested in food and nutrition research in Nutritional and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Food Studies and Applied Public Health.
Click to expand: Reviews
“I feel that this set will be exceptionally useful not only for anthropologists, but also for ethnographers, demographers, and others conducting research within food systems and food studies. With the burgeoning interest in food research at all levels, and with new graduate programs in the field, this book has the potential to be a crucial resource for scholars in the field… I look forward to requiring this as reading for my graduate students and advanced undergraduates.” · Teresa Mares, University of Vermont
“Unlike other resources I’ve come across, this set covers methods used in the traditional four fields of anthropology, ranging from highly quantitative and scientific oriented research to qualitative, culture oriented work… These volumes function as inclusive how-to manuals, providing examples of different questions each type of research might address as well as their limitations. Each chapter includes a helpful, extensive bibliography.” · Amy Bentley, New York University
“This set offers a comprehensive overview of methods across the discipline and beyond, providing readers with basic (and in some cases advanced) insights into why particular methods are useful and how those methods can be implemented… This is an unparalleled and comprehensive collection.” · David Beriss, University of New Orleans
Vol. 3, Food Health: Nutrition, Technology, and Public Health
Vol. 2, Food Culture: Anthropology, Linguistics and Food Studies
Vol. 1, Food Research: Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods
Anthropology of Food & Nutrition
Series Editor: Helen Macbeth, Oxford Brookes University
Eating is something all humans must do to survive, but it is more than a biological necessity. Producing food, foraging, distributing, shopping, cooking and, of course, eating itself are all are deeply inscribed as cultural acts. This series brings together the broad range of perspectives on human food, encompassing social, cultural and nutritional aspects of food habits, beliefs, choices and technologies in different regions and societies, past and present. Each volume features cross-disciplinary and international perspectives on the topic of its title. This multidisciplinary approach is particularly relevant to the study of food-related issues in the contemporary world.
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Food, Nutrition, and Culture
Series Editors: Jakob Klein, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Melissa L. Caldwell, University of California, Santa Cruz
While eating is a biological necessity, the production, distribution, preparation, consumption, and disposal of food are all deeply culturally inscribed activities. Taking an anthropological perspective, this book series provides a forum for critically engaged, ethnographically grounded work on the cultural, social, political, economic, and ecological aspects of human nutrition and food habits. The monographs and edited collections in this series present timely, food-related scholarship intended for researchers, academics, students, and those involved in food policy, businesses, and activism. Covering a wide range of topics, geographic regions and mobilities across regions, the series decenters dominant, often western-centered approaches and assumptions in food studies.
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