The cultural economy of the global food system

“Fast Food/Slow Food provides a provocative series of scholarly essays that address some of the myriad issues concerning food and culture in today’s world. We are at an important crossroad in the way we eat and grow food both locally and globally. We need to think about our relationship to food and how we have gotten to where we are as well as where we need to go in the future.”
Antonia Demas, Ph. D., president of Food Studies Institute and author of Food is Elementary

“The essays in this fascinating volume look at the simultaneous intersection of the global and the local in diverse food cultures around the globe, from Mali to Japan, Mexico to Laos. Challenging a homogeneous model of food commodification and dietary globalization, the authors explore how people in diverse cultures balance contradictory culinary forces by localizing fast food, integrating modern foods into culturally meaningful diets, revitalizing dying food practices, and resisting the loss of rich traditions centered on food-ways. Lively writing, rich detail, and insightful perspectives make this a valuable book for students and scholars all across the social sciences.”
Carole Counihan, Millersville University

“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 7-Eleven and transform it, and food of moderate pace is consumed in everyday spaces.”
Elizabeth Engelhardt, the University of Texas at Austin

Richard 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 missing in other economic and developmental studies and provide rich ethnographie data on markets, industrial production, and food economies. Fast Food/Slow Food will appeal to professionals in economic and environmental anthropology, consumer behavior, nutritional sciences, economic development environmental sustainability, agricultural economics, and globalization studies.

Richard Wilk is professor of anthropology and gender studies at Indiana University and past president of the Society for Economic Anthropology.