Food Between the Country and the City ― Ethnographies of a Changing Global Foodscape

At a time when the relationship between ‘the country’ and ‘the city’ is in flux worldwide, the value and meanings of food associated with both places continue to be debated. Building upon the foundation of Raymond Williams’ classic work, The Country and the City, this volume examines how conceptions of the country and the city invoked in relation to food not only reflect their changing relationship but have also been used to alter the very dynamics through which countryside and cities, and the food grown and eaten within them, are produced and sustained.

Leading scholars in the study of food offer ethnographic studies of peasant homesteads, family farms, community gardens, state food industries, transnational supermarkets, planning offices, tourist boards, and government ministries in locales across the globe. This fascinating collection demonstrates that, whether categorized as rural or urban, food around the world today has been shaped by, and in turn has shaped, historical processes through which the country, the city, and the relationship between these places and their foods have continually, and sometimes dramatically, been reconstituted.

This text provides vital new insight into the contested dynamics of food and will be key reading for upper-level students and scholars of food studies, anthropology, history and geography.

Nuno Domingos is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and a Research Associate of the Food Studies Centre, SOAS, University of London, UK.

Jose Manuel Sobral is Senior Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, where he is currently the Director of the PhD Program in Social Anthropology.

Harry G. West is Professor of Anthropology, and Chair of the Food Studies Centre, at SOAS, University of London, UK.