Greetings from your editor. I am happy to introduce our latest issue of international scholarship from multidisciplinary perspectives, as the name of our journal indicates. The scholars whose work is published here represent a variety of disciplines and fields, including cultural studies, sociology, media studies, agroecology, anthropology, Asian studies, as well as consumption and sustainability studies. While emanating from a variety of disciplines and employing different methodologies, all concern themselves with a couple of important questions. First:
How do people eat?
Two articles in this volume empirically document and analyze emerging and evolving consumption patterns. Ewa Jaroz surveys eating patterns comparatively across three distinct countries (the United States, Poland, and Armenia), while Isabelle Darmon and Alan Warde document the evolution of taste and diet change in cross-national couples.
In addition to “How do people eat” a second major question is:
What does food mean?
Two articles focus on cultural and socially derived meanings and uses of food or concepts of food. Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe, Tove Christensen, and Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, exploring the meanings of “organic” to Danish informants, identify fixed notions of the term that allow “trust to replace knowledge.” Finally, Tierney’s study of sumo wrestler’s chanko stew provides a way to understand notions of “authenticity” in Japanese society.
Many, many thanks to the authors, peer reviewers, book reviewers, our Taylor and Francis copy and production editors, book review editor John Lang, and especially assistant managing editor Katherine Magruder.
Amy Bentley