Food Values in Europe

(Paperback)

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What can a focus on food projects in Europe tell us about contemporary social processes and cultural debates Valeria Siniscalchi and Krista Harper show how food becomes a marker of identity and resistance to social exclusion, and how food values become tools for transforming power dynamics at the local level and beyond. Through the comparison of food-centered movements across Europe, the book explains how these forms of mobilization express ideologies as well as economic and political objectives. The chapters use an ethnographic approach to focus on the transformation of values carried by individuals and groups in relation to food in Portugal, Greece, Latvia, Moldova, Denmark, the UK, Italy, and France. Contributors analyze food values, as expressed in daily life and livelihoods, through specific practices of production, exchange, and consumption. Topics covered include Pragues urban agricultural scene, the perception of poverty in Moldova, shepherds protests in Sardinia, and organic food cooperatives in Catalonia.

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Food Values in Europe is worth reading and discussing because it brings this exceptionally well-developed anthropology and sociology of European food and agriculture into conversation with the critique of globalized food systems and the commodity fetishisms they entail. * EuropeNow *

Author Bio

Krista Harper is Professor of Anthropology and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the USA. Valeria Siniscalchi is Professor of Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in France.