A sociological perception of food: a critical analysis of research developments in the study of food
Abstract
The Sociology of Food is a relatively new area of work which only in recent years has gained international scientific relevance as a discipline of study (Mennell, Murcotrt and van Otterloo, 1992; McIntosh, 1996; Beardsworth and Keil, 1997; Germov and Williams, 2000; Koc, Sumner and Wilson, 2012). The delay in the formation of a specific scientific body is the result of a combination of factors: the diversity of subjects, the methodological difficulties to face a multidimensional field of study, or the scarcity of comparative studies. This paper summarizes how sociology undertakes the study of food. We made a study of the scientific articles on food that have been published in the last 20 years in the journals of Sociology that appear in the Journal Citation Report. This paper allows us to present an overview of the studies on the Sociology of Food at the international level and to make some critical proposals as to their evolution. As a result, we may conclude that the Sociology of Food occupies a specific field of study, although it frequently overlaps the fields of Rural Sociology and Sociology of Consumption.
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