Food preparation, consumption, and exchange are eminently social
practices, and experiencing another cuisine often provides our first
encounter with a different culture. This volume presents fascinating
essays about cooking, eating, and sharing food, by anthropologists
working in many parts of the world, exploring what they learned by
eating with others.

These are accounts of specific experiences -
of cooking in Mombasa, shopping for organic produce in Vienna, eating
vegetarian in Vietnam, raising and selling chickens in Hong Kong, and of
refugees subsisting on food aid. With a special focus on the experience
and challenge of ethnographic fieldwork, the essays cover a wide range
of topics in food studies and anthropology, including food safety and
food security, cultural diversity and globalization, colonial histories
and contemporary identities, and changing ecological, social, and
political relations across cultures.

Food: Ethnographic Encounters
offers readers a broad view of the vibrancy of local and global food
cultures, and provides an accessible introduction to both food studies
and contemporary ethnography.