Fast Food/Slow Food

The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System

Contributions by Cathy Banwell, Theodore C. Bestor, Michael L. Burton, Jane Dixon, James A. Egan, Sarah Hinde, Valerie Imbruce, Dolores Koenig, Sarah Lyon, Ty Matejowsky, Heather McIntyre, Sidney Mintz, Karen L. Nero, Heather Paxson, Jeffery Pilcher, Lois Stanford, Penny Van Esterik, Gavin Whitelaw Edited by Richard Wilk

Publication date:

24 August 2006

Length of book:

272 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759109155

Wilk and his colleagues draw upon their own international field experience to examine how food systems are changing around the globe. The authors offer a cultural perspective that is mising in other economic and developmental studies, and provide rich ethnographic data on markets, industrial production, and food economies. This new book will appeal to professionals in economic and environmental anthropology: economic development, agricultural economics, consumer behavior, nutritional sciences, environmental sustainability, and globalization studies.

Part 1 Part I: Introduction
Chapter 2 Chapter 1: Food at Moderate Speeds
Chapter 3 Chapter 2: From Wild Weeds to Artisanal Cheese
Part 4 Part II: Whole Food Economies: Breaking Down Dichotomies
Chapter 5 Chapter 3: Building Lives with Food: Production, Circulation, and Consumption of Food in Yap
Chapter 6 Chapter 4: Food for the Malian Middle Class: An Invisible Cuisine
Chapter 7 Chapter 5: Taco Bell, Maseca, and Slow Food: A Postmodern Apocalypse for Mexico's Peasant Cuisine?
Chapter 8 Chapter 6: From Hunger Foods to Heritage Foods: Challenges to Food Localization in Lao PDR
Chapter 9 Chapter 7: Tasting the Worlds of Yesterday and Today: Culinary Tourism and Nostalgia Foods in Post-Soviet Russia
Part 10 Part III: The Contradictions of Industrial Food
Chapter 11 Chapter 8: Kaiten-zushi and Konbini: Japanese Food Culture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Chapter 12 Chapter 9: Rice Ball Rivalries: Japanese Convenience Stores and the Appetite of Late Capitalism
Chapter 13 Chapter 10: Global Tastes, Local Contexts: An Ethnographic Account of Fast Food Expansion in San Fernando City, the Philippines
Part 14 Part IV: Transforming Markets and Reconnecting with Consumers
Chapter 15 Chapter 11: From the Bottom-Up: The Global Expansion of Chinese Begetable Trade for New York City Markets
Chapter 16 Chapter 12: The Role of Ideology in New Mexico's CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Organizations: Conflicting Visions between Growers and Members
Chapter 17 Chapter 13: Artisanal Cheese and Economies of Sentiment in New England
Chapter 18 Chapter 14: Fast and Slow Food in the Fast Lane: Automobility and the Australian Diet
Chapter 19 Chapter 15: 'Just Java': Roasting Fair Trade Coffee

Setting out to explore the range of food markets, Fast Food/Slow Food reveals global and corporate connections in the slow food movement and local and regional variations of the fast food industry. More than that, this collection looks at food in the middle, where Russian culinary tours meet Lao survival food in trendy American chefs' offerings, ancient Japanese fast foods enter Seven Eleven and transform it, and food of moderate pace is consumed in everyday spaces. Wilk and the contributors make accessible for the rest of us how economic anthropology pulls back a layer in our conversation about transnational food and foodways.