The field of food studies has been growing rapidly over the last thirty years and has exploded since the turn of the millennium. Scholars from an array of disciplines have trained fresh theoretical and methodological approaches onto new dimensions of the human relationship to food. This anthology capitalizes on this particular cultural moment to bring to the fore recent scholarship that focuses on innovative ways people are recasting food in public spaces to challenge hegemonic practices and meanings. Organized into five interrelated sections on food production--consumption, performance, Diasporas, and activism--articles aim to provide new perspectives on the changing meanings and uses of food in the 21st century.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World, Psyche Williams-Forson and Carole Counihan Rethinking Production 2. Food Industrialization and Food Power: Implications for Food Governance, Tim Lang 3. Women and Food Chains: The Gendered Politics of Food, Patricia Allen and Carolyn Sachs 4. Can We Sustain Sustainable Agriculture? Learning from Small-scale Producer-suppliers in Canada and the UK 5. Things Became Scarce: Food Availability and Accessibility in Santiago de Cuba Then and Now, Hanna Garth 6. Capitalism and its Discontents: Back-to-the-Lander and Freegan Foodways in Rural Organ, Joan Gross 7. Cultural Geographies in Practice: The South Central Farm: Dilemmas in Practicing the Public, Laura Lawson 8. Charlas Cullinarias: Women Speaking from Their Public Kitchens, Meredith E. Abarca Rethinking Food Consumption 9. Inequality in Obesigenic Environments: Fast Food Destiny in New York City, N.O.A. Kwate, Chun-Yip Yau, Ji-Meng Loh, and Donya Williams 10. Physical Disabilities and Food Access Among Limited Resource Households, Caroline B. Webber, Jeffrey Sobal, and Jamie S. Dollahite 11. Other Women Cooked for My Husband: Negotiating Gender, Food, and Identities in an African American/Ghanaian Household, Psyche Williams-Forson 12. Going Beyond the Normative, White, "Post-racial" Vegan Epistemology, Amie Breeze Harper 13. Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam, C. Rouse and J. Hoskins 14. Gleaning from Gluttony: An Australian Youth Subculture Confront the Ethics of Waste, Ferne Edward and David Mercer 15. If They Only Knew: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions, Julie Guthmann Performing Food Cultures 16. Feeding Desire: Food, Domesticity and Challenges to Heteropatriarchy, Anita Mannur 17. Towards Queering Food Studies: Foodways, Heternormativity, and Hungry Women in Chicana Lesbian Writing, Julia C. Ehrhardt 18. Metrosexuality Can Stuff It: Beef Consumption as (Heteromasculine) Fortification, C. Wesley Buerkle 19. "Please Pass the Chicken Tits": Rethinking Men and Cooking at an Urban Firehouse, Jonathan Deutsch 20. Magic Metabolisms: Competitive Eating and the Formation of an American Bodily Idea, Adrienne Johnson 21. Vintage Breast Milk: Exploring the Discursive Limits of Feminine Fluids, Penny Van Esterik 22. Do the Hands that Feed Us Hold Us Back?: Implications of Assisted Eating, Physical Disabilities and Food Access Among Limited Resource Households, G. Denise Lance 23. Will Tweet for Food, Alison Caldwell 24. Visualizing 21st Century Foodscapes: Using Photographs and New Media in Food Studies, Melissa Salazar Food Diasporas Taking Food Global 25. Justice at a Price: Regulation and Alienation in the Global Economy, Daniel Reichman 26. From the Bottom Up: The Global Expansion of Chinese Vegetable Trade for New York City Markets, Valerie Imbruce 27. SPAM and Fast-food ‘Glocalization’ in the Philippines: Perspectives from the Provincial Philippines, Ty Matejowsky 28. The Envios of San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca: Food, home, and transnationalism, J.I. Grieshop 29. Consuming Interests: Water, Rum, and Coca-Colas from Ritual Propitiation to Corporate Expropriation in Highland Chiapas, June Nash 30. Feeding the Jewish Soul in the Delta Diaspora, Marcie Cohen Ferris 31. The Yoruba Body, Julie Boticello 32. Tequila Shots, Marie Sarita Gaytan 33. The Political Uses of Culture: Maize Production and the GM Corn Debates, Elizabeth Fitting Food Activism 34. Practicing Food Democracy: A Pragmatic Politics of Transformation, Neva Hassanein 35. Food, Place and Authenticity: Local Food and the Sustainable Tourism Experience, Rebecca Sims 36. Mexicans Taking Food Public: The Power of the Kitchen in the San Luis Valley, Carole Counihan 37. A Feminist Examination of Community Kitchen in Peru and Bolivia, Kathleen Schroeder 38. Visceral Difference: Variations in Feeling (Slow) Food, Allison Hayes-Conroy and Jessica Hayes-Conroy 39. Expanding Access and Alternatives: Building Farmers’ Markets in Low-Income Communities, Lisa Markowitz 40. Vegetarians: Uninvited, Uncomfortable, or Special Guests at the Table of the Alternative Food Economy, Carol Morris and James Kirwan 41. Advocacy and Everyday Health Activism among Persons with Celiac Disease: A comparison of Eager, Reluctant, and Non-Activists, Denise Copelton 42. The Year of Eating Politically, Chad Lavin 43. From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty: The Challenge of Social Movements, Eric Holt-Giménez