In this book, available for the first time in paperback, the complexity and the significance of the foods we eat are analysed from a variety of perspectives, by sociologists, economists, geographers and anthropologists. Chapters address a number of intriguing questions: how do people make judgements about taste? How do such judgements come to be shared by groups of people? What social and organisational processes result in foods being certified as of decent or proper quality? How has dissatisfaction with the food system been expressed? what alternatives are thought to be possible? The multi-disciplinary analysis of this book explores many different answers to such questions. The first part of the book focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues, the second part considers processes of formal and informal regulation, while the third part examines social and political responses to industrialised food production and mass consumption. Qualities of food will be of interest to researchers and students in all the social science disciplines that are concerned with food, whether marketing, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, human nutrition or economics.

Mark Harvey is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition at the University of Manchester. Andrew McMeekin is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competitionat the University of Manchester. Alan Warde is Professor of Sociology and Co-director of the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition at the University of Manchester