Pt. I. Absences and presences : how we (do not) eat what (we think) we eat -- pt. II. Intimacies, estrangements and ambivalences : how eating comforts and disquiets -- pt. III. Contradictions and coexistences : what we should and should not eat -- pt. IV. Entanglements and mobilizations : the multiple sites of eating encounters

Why We Eat, How We Eat maps new terrains in thinking about relations between foods and bodies. With the central premise that food is always both symbolic and material, the volume explores the intersections of current critical debates regarding how and why individuals eat. Through a series of case studies and theoretical interludes it examines how foods and bodies both haphazardly encounter, and actively engage with, one another in ways that are simultaneously social, economic, political, biological and sensorial