A Theory of Grocery Shopping: Food, Choice and Conflict

(Hardback)

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Description

Grocery shopping is an often ignored part of the story of how food ultimately gets to our pantry shelves and tables. A Theory of Grocery Shopping explores the social organization of grocery shopping by linking the lived experience of grocery shoppers and retail managers in the US with information transmitted by nutritionists, government employees, financial advisors, journalists, health care providers and marketers, who influence the way we think about and perform the work of shopping for a household's food. The author provides insight into the contradictory messages that shape how consumers provision their households, and details how consumers respond to these messages. The book challenges the consumer choice model that places responsibility on the shopper for making the "right" choice at the grocery store, thereby ignoring the larger social forces at work, which determine what products are available and how they get to the shelves.

Reviews

This book dramatically illustrates the work and significance of food provisioning. Scholars wishing to identify problems in the food system or offer prescriptions for change would do well to read this text. * Tracey Deutsch, Department of History, University of Minnesota *
This work represents a much-needed link to books focusing on aspects of the US food chain from production through consumption. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduate students through professionals. -- J. M. Deutsch, CUNY Kingsborough Community College * CHOICE *
An interesting, thought provoking read...this book examines the whole business of grocery shopping (from a U.S. perspective) with a social organisational slant... It is an academically-focussed work yet it also tries to be accessible and of interest to the mainstream, enthusiastic reader. This fine balancing act seems to have been well managed and the back of the book has a massive bibliography and very detailed index for those who require this level of access. * Yum.fi *
A Theory of Grocery Shopping covers new and interesting territory theoretically, and does so using both illustrative respondent quotations and examples from the different areas of social discourse ... [A]n engaging and accessible read. * Contemporary Sociology *

Author Bio

Shelley L. Koch is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Assistant Director of the Masters of Arts program in Community and Organizational Leadership at Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia, USA.