Introduction Halal Pizza: Food and Culture in a Busy World1

Abstract

This article introduces a collection of seven papers that offer anthropological examinations of contemporary food‐related practices in the Australasian‐Pacific region. The collection is based on those presented in the panel ‘Eat me! An anthropological examination of food’ at the Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, 2001. I set out the ethnographic terrain of food in processes of contemporary Australian cultural production, introduce the articles and then briefly discuss the three key themes of the collection. These are the trajectory of grand processes, such as colonialism, in the intimate movements of daily life; the reproduction of social forms via socialities relating to food and commensality; and the (sensory) manifestation and embodiment of epistemes (such as gender) in food‐ and consumption‐related values and practices.