Episodes

  • Hanna Garth, "Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement" (U California Press, 2026)

    Hanna Garth, "Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement" (U California Press, 2026)
    Feb 14 2026
    Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their best intentions, they often perpetuate food access inequalities and racial stereotypes. Hanna Garth shows how the movement has been affected by misconceptions and assumptions about residents, as well as by unclear definitions of justice and what it means to be healthy. Focusing on broad structures and microlevel processes, Garth reveals how power dynamics shape social justice movements in particular ways.Drawing on twelve years of ethnographic research, Garth examines what motivates people from more affluent, majority-white areas of the city to intervene in South Central Los Angeles. She argues that the concepts of "food justice" and "healthy food" operate as racially coded language, reinforcing the idea that health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual behavior rather than structural change. Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement (U California Press, 2026) explores the stakes of social justice and the possibility of multiracial coalitions working toward a better future. Hanna Garth is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, author of Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal, and coeditor of Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    46 mins
  • Digestive Belonging, Trans-Species Sensing & Care in America’s Dairyland

    Digestive Belonging, Trans-Species Sensing & Care in America’s Dairyland
    Feb 13 2026
    In this episode, we speak with Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Copenhagen, Katy Overstreet. Katy is coordinator for the Landscapes, Senses, and Ecological Research Cluster as well as a core-member of the Centre for Sustainable Futures – both located at the University of Copenhagen. Katy’s core fields of research include multispecies ethnography, environmental anthropology, feminist STS, and agrarian political economy, and she has written on themes such as farm animal welfare, foodways, bioindustrialisation, technoscience, trans-species sensory worlds, and care. Her main ethnographic fieldsites include the midwestern dairy worlds of the United States, and various sites in Denmark including pig farms, an insect farm, and a former brown coal mine. Across these sites, Katy has worked with a lot of different co-species social formations and technoscientifically modulated ways of living and dying in agriculture, and in today’s episode, she will speak to some of these, focusing on the relations between microbes, cows, and humans in raw milk consumption, production, and politics. The basis for our conversation is a talk that Katy gave on the day before we recorded the podcast as part of the BSAS seminar series. Her talk was titled ‘Digestive belonging: a microbial ethnography of raw milk in America’s Dairyland’. In the podcast, Katy unravels the notion of ‘digestive belonging’ in this ethnographic context, connecting it to farmlife, microbes, social landscapes, pasteurization politics, and rural nostalgia among other things. We further discuss different modes of care in animal farming practices, the cultivation of trans-species sensing, and the idea of ‘positive animal welfare’. The podcast was recorded in October 2025 when Katy was in Bergen to give a presentation as part of the Bergen Social Anthropology Seminar series. Resources: Katy Overstreet’s research profile Articles mentioned, authored by Katy: Digestive Belonging: A Microbial Ethnography of Raw Milk in America’s Dairyland (2026) Be the boar: sex, sows, and courtship on a Danish pig farm (2022) How to Taste Like a Cow: Cultivating Shared Sense in Wisconsin Dairy Worlds (2021) EU funded Cost Action project LIFT aimed at ‘Lifting farm animal lives’ that Katy participates in: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    58 mins
  • Bridget Salmon and Andrew Godley, "The Making of the Modern Supermarket: Self-Service Adoption in British Food Retailing, 1950-1975" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Bridget Salmon and Andrew Godley, "The Making of the Modern Supermarket: Self-Service Adoption in British Food Retailing, 1950-1975" (Oxford UP, 2025)
    Feb 12 2026
    What seems mundane today—walking into a supermarket, picking up goods, and paying at a checkout—was once a radical experiment. In our latest New Books Network episode, I speak with Andrew Godley about The Making of the Modern Supermarkett: Self-Service Adoption in British Food Retailing, 1950-1975 (Oxford UP, 2025), co-authored with Bridget Salmon, former archivist at J. Sainsbury plc. This is a book about far more than shopping. It is a history of technology, management, urban planning, consumer behaviour, and how everyday routines were quietly transformed in post-war Britain. Drawing on rare corporate archives, Godley and Salmon reveal how supermarkets were not inevitable but carefully designed organisations shaped by strategic choices, technological constraints, and shifting consumer expectations. In the conversation, we explore how self-service reshaped labour and productivity, why Sainsbury’s distinctive commitment to fresh meat helped define the one-stop supermarket, and how planning initiatives such as the New Towns and Abercrombie’s vision for London influenced retail geography. We also discuss early experiments with computerised ordering, the limits of technological modernisation, and what Sainsbury’s story can—and cannot—tell us about the wider evolution of retailing in Britain and Europe. Finally, Andrew reflects on the surprises hidden in corporate archives and what the history of supermarkets can teach us about today’s transformations—from online grocery shopping to automated checkouts. If you have ever wondered how the modern supermarket came to be—and what it reveals about capitalism, technology, and everyday life—this episode is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Gaoheng Zhang, "Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities" (Fordham UP, 2025)

    Gaoheng Zhang, "Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities" (Fordham UP, 2025)
    Jan 31 2026
    Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities (Fordham UP, 2025) by Dr. Gaoheng Zhang designs a novel analytical framework to approach transcultural food mobilities, a culinary phenomenon that has been with us for decades as a result of colonialism and globalization.Why is it surprising for some of us to read the pairing of “Chinese” with “pizzas” and “Italian” with “dumplings,” such as proposed in the book’s title? After all, in some regions of the two countries, Italians eat frequently dumplings, and Chinese frequently make baked, steamed, or fried flatbread with toppings or fillings. Furthermore, when dumplings are made in Italy by Chinese migrants or Chinese Italians, or when pizzas are made in China by Italian migrants, Chinese Italians, or Chinese without apparent ties with Italy, are these culinary products Chinese, Italian, Chinese-Italian, or something else? Why do we need to care for such labeling dilemmas?This book shows how China-Italy food mobilities relayed in popular culture helped forge Chi­nese and Italians’ socioeconomic identities in recent decades by fundamentally shaping contempo­rary Chinese and Italian consumer cultures. This book addresses China-Italy food cultures against the backdrops of two epoch-making socioeconomic processes. During the 1980s, Chinese cuisine became the first non-European food widely available in Italy, thanks to the widespread presence of Chinese eateries. Only American fast food, which established itself in Italy around the same time, enjoyed comparable popularity as a destination for Italian culinary tourism. Meanwhile, in the early 1990s, together with American hamburgers and fried chicken, the American food chain Pizza Hut’s pizzas and spaghetti were the first non-Asian foods that post-Mao Chinese customers recognized as “Western.” The book proposes a critical framework that analyzes transcultural food mobilities by seriously assessing the confluence of diverse mobilities and their impact on food cultures. Ulti­mately, the study shows that a sophisticated interpretation of transcultural food mobilities can help address alterity and build understanding in a world of increasing political and cultural polarization. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    43 mins
  • Hanna Garth, "Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement" (U California Press, 2026)

    Hanna Garth, "Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement" (U California Press, 2026)
    Jan 23 2026
    Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their best intentions, they often perpetuate food access inequalities and racial stereotypes. In Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement (U California Press, 2026) Hanna Garth shows how the movement has been affected by misconceptions and assumptions about residents, as well as by unclear definitions of justice and what it means to be healthy. Focusing on broad structures and microlevel processes, Garth reveals how power dynamics shape social justice movements in particular ways. Drawing on twelve years of ethnographic research, Garth examines what motivates people from more affluent, majority-white areas of the city to intervene in South Central Los Angeles. She argues that the concepts of "food justice" and "healthy food" operate as racially coded language, reinforcing the idea that health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual behavior rather than structural change. Food Justice Undone explores the stakes of social justice and the possibility of multiracial coalitions working toward a better future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    31 mins
  • Ishita Dey, "Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal" (Routledge, 2025)

    Ishita Dey, "Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal" (Routledge, 2025)
    Jan 21 2026
    Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal (Routledge, 2025) by Ishita Dey is an ethnographic work on excess. Based on a decade-long fieldwork of a single food substance – sweets – it follows sweet-making in sweetshops, domestic spaces, fairs, festivals and its representation in recipe books to understand how caste, religion, science and law inform the life of a food item with an extremely short shelf life. It shows how food items of conspicuous consumption find a meaning in everyday lives of people through its socio-cultural meanings – ritual, pride of craftsmanship, heritage and cultural identity. It also shows how sweets continue to be a ubiquitous part of ‘Bengali’ diet in a geography that has been witness to acute hunger, starvation, food movements and social welfare programmes to ensure food security. As a multi-sited ethnography on sweetness in diverse settings and its associated meanings in West Bengal and Bangladesh, this book explores everyday workplace hierarchies between artisans that reveal how caste and religion inform the choice of who is hired into this line of work. It also highlights how discourses on food safety and the overpowering presence of World Trade Organization have affected the life of the Bengali mishti. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of ethnography, sociology, history and South Asian studies. And if you, dear reader, love mishti, you will love this, too!Satyaki Barua is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. His research focuses on party organisation, party institutionalisation, and political mobilisation, particularly examining the interactions between the state, society, and political parties in India and South Asia. Outside of academia, Satyaki enjoys watching and discussing movies, as well as practising Hindustani classical music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Patrick McGuigan and Carlos Yescas, "One Cheese to Rule Them All: In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses" (Murdoch Books, 2025)

    Patrick McGuigan and Carlos Yescas, "One Cheese to Rule Them All: In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses" (Murdoch Books, 2025)
    Jan 20 2026
    Are you a Comté connoisseur or does your heart belong to Rogue River Blue? Can you tell your Brie from your Camembert? Can you name an award-winning Indian cheese and would you recognise a cheese iron? If you take your cheese seriously then One Cheese to Rule Them All: In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses (Murdoch Books, 2025) is the companion you need to live your best cheese life. World Cheese Awards judges Patrick McGuigan and Carlos Yescas have a wealth of knowledge garnered from years of travelling and tasting. One Cheese to Rule Them All is a distillation of that experience through 100 cheese profiles that have won awards over the years, offering charming geekery against a backdrop of the people, places and history that define these world-class cheeses. You'll learn how cheese is made, what to drink with each cheese, its World Cheese Awards status, its texture and taste, and lots more to help you choose your cheese more wisely and enjoy it even more. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    1 hr
  • Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, "Taco" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

    Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, "Taco" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
    Jan 19 2026
    Taco (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from Mexico to the United States and back, Dr. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado discusses the definition of the taco, the question of the tortilla and the taco shell, and the existence of the taco as a modern social touchstone that has been shaped by history and geography.  Challenging the idea of centrality and authenticity, in this latest addition to the Object Lessons series, Dr. Sánchez Prado shows instead that the taco is a contemporary, transcultural food that has always been subject to transformation. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
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    37 mins