I too think the “sociology of food” should be more central to the discipline, and I for one aim to get it there. Hopefully. The intersection of literatures mentioned in the original post is EXACTLY what I think my work is about. My dissertation is about the foie gras controversies in the US and France and looks at the nexus of movements, markets, and the state in defining morality and virtue. My other project was about ‘virtuous food’ movements - the connections and disjunctures between local food, organic food, and the Slow Food movement. (Grad student question - are we allowed to plug our stuff here? If so, read on…) That turned into a book chapter that is coming out next year in an edited volume: The Globalization of Food, edited by David Inglis (the editor of the new Cultural Sociology journal), and I’ve collaborated with two great folks at Kellogg (the business school) for an article on the grass-fed beef movement as the creation of a market out of a movement (forthcoming in ASQ).

Food studies is growing as a discipline - there is a fabulous listserv - ASFS, run out of NYU, which has the only Food Studies PhD program in the country. Indiana University has a degree program associated with their anthropology department, and there are food studies people lurking around the country - they are smart and involved people who bridge disciplinary boundaries. It is much bigger a discipline, in its own right, in Europe and Australia (and they have better funding opportunities to study food, as well), but it is exploding in this country as well. No ASA section yet, though (I think that Consumers, Consumption, and Commodities should get one first).

I’m happy to answer more questions about what is happening in the food studies world, people, conferences, listservs and websites, journals (we have several journals), books (there’s a huge amount of information already available, and more coming every year).

Michaela

I think this is among the reasons why a lot of rural soc departments are changing their names. Many rural sociologists (though by no means all) study food and agriculture - but we know very well that these are not uniquely “rural” problems (also, the very definition of “rurality” is hotly debated - see Michael Bell’s work on this).

Personally, I would love it if ASA had a food and agriculture section and more people in “regular” soc did work on these topics. I agree that food and ag can (and should) be studied within existing areas of the discipline - but I like the idea of connecting insights from cultural, political, economic, organizational (etc.) sociology around a particular topic. I’d say that’s the model for many of the other ASA sections, like the science, knowledge and technology section, or the environment section.

She was also, for me, a rockstar TA.

also, a fine student with an 07 ph.d. from rutgers:

Vanina Leschziner, Cultural Creation: The Creation of Culture and the Culture of Creation. A Sociological Analysis in the Culinary Sphere. (Karen Cerulo, John L. Martin, Paul McLean, Ann Mische)