Abstract
The purpose of this article is to highlight the relationship among food, city and space by adopting a social sciences viewpoint. Since the 1990s, not only in sociology but in the social sciences in general, the level of attention given to the role played by space in the production of social phenomena has increased. To describe this trend, certain authors have coined the expression “spatial turn”, which is analogous to the “linguistic turn” that influenced poststructuralist sociology (Warf and Arias 2009; Löw and Steets 2014). The definition of urban food policies, like production of a food product and distribution, the fact that it is more or less accessible and generates surpluses, and its transformation through an industrial process or its use for a domestic recipe, are processes that provide a good example of the interaction among biophysical, economic and socio-cultural aspects, in which all the geographical and climatic characteristics of the places where these processes take place play a role, as do cultural influences, the skills of the actors, and their power relations. In this article, the associations among food, city, and space are shown through the presentation of examples, highlighting certain of the principal topics, and clarifying how the numerous issues relating to food can lead to problems of a micro, mesa or macro nature. In our conclusions, we will stress the value added of the specialist perspective in the study of issues relating to food.
Highlights
The topic of food has enjoyed a long history of analysis in the social sciences, especially in anthropology, and— albeit more occasionally—in sociology, at least since Simmel (1910) work
Its significance has increased in more recent times, above all since the 1990s. This is due in the first place to the political importance of the topic: it is no coincidence that the goal of Zero Hunger, the purpose of which is to reduce the number of persons suffering from a chronic lack of food and to improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, is in second place among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)1 approved by the United Nations in 2015
Concluding remarks Before we conclude, it may be helpful to add a few more thoughts in order to underline the value-added deriving from studies on food that adopt a spatialist perspective
Summary
The topic of food has enjoyed a long history of analysis in the social sciences, especially in anthropology, and— albeit more occasionally—in sociology, at least since Simmel (1910) work. Its significance has increased in more recent times, above all since the 1990s This is due in the first place to the political importance of the topic: it is no coincidence that the goal of Zero Hunger, the purpose of which is to reduce the number of persons suffering from a chronic lack of food and to improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, is in second place among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) approved by the United Nations in 2015. Within this framework, sociology has seen an increased interest in food, and has been involved in many areas of investigation involving numerous sub-disciplines, from economic to cultural, political, urban, and rural sociology. As will be seen shortly, this is an extremely topical perspective that has not often been used in studies on food systems
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