Waste Matters - Softcover

Waste Matters is the first collection of sociologically informed approaches to be published on the globally important, yet largely under-researched, topic of food waste. In recent years, social scientists have begun to conceptualize waste as dynamic matter that shapes processes of cultural and economic organization. Bringing together theoretical and empirical contributions from a range of perspectives, these original papers extend such developments to the analysis of food. Individual studies explore the regulation and governance of food systems; the dynamics of social and domestic practice; the materiality of foodstuffs and associated technologies; the shifting entanglements and arrangements that shape how things are valued; and the categorization and circulation of food and waste. Taken together, these analyses not only highlight the various ways in which social science can inform an issue central to public and policy agendas, but also demonstrate the significance of food waste for a number of contemporary issues in sociology and social theory.

David Evans is Lecturer in Sociology and Sustainable Consumption Institute Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK.

Hugh Campbell is Professor of Sociology at the University of Otago, NZ.

Anne Murcott isProfessorial Research Associate at the SOAS Food Studies Centre, UK.