This book reconstructs and extends sociological approaches to the understanding of food consumption. It identifies new ways to approach the explanation of food choice and it develops new concepts which will help reshape and reorient common understandings. Leading sociologist of food, Alan Warde, deals both with abstract issues about theories of practice and substantive analyses of aspects of eating, demonstrating how theories of practice can be elaborated and systematically applied to the ...

How have eating habits changed in recent decades? What does it mean to eat well?This fascinating book examines continuity and change in food consumption and eating patterns since the 1950s. The culinary landscape of Britain is explored through discussion of commodification, globalisation and diversification enabling an understanding of both developing trends and enduring habits.The author’s research undertaken over 40 years offers fresh insights into such practices as every...

This book critically reviews recent social scientific investigations of consumption, a controversial topic with moral overtones, and of popular public interest and political and economic significance. The author explores how consumption affects personal identity and social position, developing a sociological analysis using theories of practice to account for everyday consumption, its role in the social order, and its consequences for environmental sustainability. The book offers a controve...

Dining out used to be considered exceptional. However, the Food Standards Authority reported that in 2014, one meal in six was eaten away from home in Britain. Previously considered a necessary substitute for an inability to obtain a meal in a family home, dining out has become a popular recreational activity for a majority of the population, offering pleasure as well as refreshment.Based on a major mixed-methods research project on dining out in England, this book offers a unique ...

Seeker, a young woman from the city of Commonplace, wanders into the Lifestyle Shoppe, seeking a life. The shopkeeper explains to her its three rooms: Broadway, Striveway, and Narrow Way. Seeker resolves to try out each room before deciding where to buy. On her journey through each room, she encounters people engaged in various attempts to discover that elusive commodity called happiness.Told with the feel of a modern-day Pilgrims Progress, Seeker and other Lifestyle Shoppe charact...

In the long-awaited sequel to “Between Two Seas,” “The Courier” takes up the story with the shadowy, cloaked figure sailing from the island of Melitene, leaving behind a path of misery and destruction. But though the young man has escaped the island, can he escape himself? Fifteen-year-old Eletia, pregnant and new to the faith, is wondering how she will raise her child alone, with the father nowhere to be found. Though the fledgling church on Melitene is thriving under the leadership of Pu...

In the book In Search of Paradise: Gintong Luha, five gold coins save the lives of Eric “Wake” Palmer and his fiancée, Dr. Kathleen Mercado. This is a story of a couple who fall in love and then, through circumstance, are betrayed by a trusted acquaintance that results in their abduction by pirate-terrorists while on a sailing excursion. What ensues next is a struggle for survival and finding a means of escape from cruel and lethal captors who would not think twice about cutting their head...

In ancient times, Melitene is ravaged by violence, poverty, addiction, and unrest. The new governor, Trebonius, is charged by the emperor to bring stability to the island. He seeks the counsel of two leading Melitenians who represent diametrically opposed world views. Solon is a humble seeker of his Creator. Alacerius believes only in man-made solutions, with himself in charge. Alacerius wins the governor’s favor and begins implementing his program of atheism, the corruption of morals, col...

The England of the seventeenth century, with its political and religious turmoil, was really not so different from the America of the twenty-first. Since the fall in the Garden of Eden, there has always been Gods way and mans. Hence the timelessness of John Bunyans allegorical masterpiece, The Pilgrims Progress, which first appeared in 1678.Forged from the Wilderness is the story behind the book, the story of John Bunyans life and of a little-known woman named Elizabeth, whom God m...

In this stirring sequel to “Through Fear and Trembling,” Athena Arnold becomes the new President of the United States in the wake of a hotly disputed election. Veiled in her rhetoric, but undeniable by her actions is a determination to stamp out all vestiges of biblical Christian faith in America, which she regards as toxic to society. Her aim instead is to force America into the global socialist New World Order.William Walter Cunningham, her head of the Bureau of Government Affair...

When social scientists in the 1970s began to identify the positive and constructive role of cultural practices in the operation of power, Pierre Bourdieu advanced a highly influential and subsequently controversial account. Most notably in Distinction, he charted the connections between cultural taste and practice and social classification. This book seeks to evaluate, develop and transcend the ideas that Bourdieu explored in Distinction.. Taken together the papers compare and contrast dif...

The sociology of consumption has concentrated unduly on the more spectacular and visual aspects of contemporary consumer behaviour, thereby constructing an unbalanced and misleading view. This collection emphasises ordinary rather than extraordinary items, routine and repetitive behaviour rather than conscious decision-making. It studies practical contexts of use rather than decisions to purchase and analyses collective identification rather than personal identity. Each essay argues one or...