Lire le compte-rendu de l’ouvrage par Christy Shields

“Understanding the complex juxtapositions of the enjoyment and the pain we derive from food is the core business of John Coveney’s fascinating work… This book is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the social meanings of eating.”
Dr Karen Campbell, Deakin University, Australia

“In this major contribution to the food sociology literature, John Coveney insightfully applies a Foucaultian analysis to expose the multifarious ways in which the government of parental and child conduct is enacted. This book is highly relevant for those in the fields of childhood nutrition, health promotion, dietetics, and food sociology.”
John Germov, University of Newcastle, Australia

“A strong contribution to the sociological understanding of food and its relation to social life has been made even stronger in this new edition. Of particular value are Coveney’s additions to his discussions of food morality in the context of Foucaultian notions of governmentality, especially in the new chapter on the governmentality of girth.”
Wm. Alex McIntosh, Texas A&M University, USA

Food, Morals and Meaning traces our complex relationship with food and eating and our preoccupation with diet, self-discipline and food guilt. This second edition includes an examination of how our current obsession with body size, especially fatness, drives a national and international panic about the obesity ‘epidemic’. Focussing on how our food anxieties have stemmed from social, political and religious problems in Western history, Food Morals and Meaning looks at the ancient Greeks’ preoccupation with eating, early Christianity and the conflict between the pleasures of the flesh and spirituality, scientific developments in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe and our current knowledge ans the social organisation of food.

This original book explains how a rationalisation food choice can be traced through a genealogy of historical social imperatives and moral panics. Food, Morals and Meaning is essential reading for those studying nutrition, public health, sociology of health and illness and sociology of the body.

John Coveney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health, Flinders University, Australia.