Waste Matters is the first collection of sociologically informed approaches to be published on the globally important, yet largely under-researched, topic of food waste. In recent years, social scientists have begun to conceptualize waste as dynamic matter that shapes processes of cultural and economic organization. Bringing together theoretical and empirical contributions from a range of perspectives, these original papers extend such developments to the analysis of food. Individual studies explore the regulation and governance of food systems; the dynamics of social and domestic practice; the materiality of foodstuffs and associated technologies; the shifting entanglements and arrangements that shape how things are valued; and the categorization and circulation of food and waste. Taken together, these analyses not only highlight the various ways in which social science can inform an issue central to public and policy agendas, but also demonstrate the significance of food waste for a number of contemporary issues in sociology and social theory.

InhaltsangabeAcknowledgements Introduction 1. A brief pre-history of food waste and the social sciences (David Evans, Hugh Campbell and Anne Murcott) 2. From risk to waste: global food waste regimes (Zsuzsa Gille) 3. 'Waste? You mean by-products!' From bio-waste management to agro-ecology in Italian winemaking and beyond (Anna Krzywoszynska) 4. The performativity of food packaging: market devices, waste crisis and recycling (Gay Hawkins) 5. Arbiters of waste: date labels, the consumer and knowing good, safe food (Richard Milne) 6. Food, waste and safety: negotiating conflicting social anxieties into the practices of domestic provisioning (Matt Watson and Angela Meah) 7. Practising thrift at dinnertime: mealtime leftovers, sacrifice and family membership (Benedetta Cappellini and Elizabeth Parsons) 8. Food waste bins: bridging infrastructures and practices (Alan Metcalfe, Mark Riley, Stewart Barr, Terry Tudor, Guy Robinson and Steve Guilbert) 9. Eating from the bin: Salmon heads, waste and the markets that make them (Benjamin Coles and Lucius Hallett IV) 10. Food waste in Australia: the freegan response (Ferne Edwards and Dave Mercer) 11. A 'lasting transformation' of capitalist surplus: from food stocks to feedstocks (Martin O'Brien) 12. The disposal of place: facing modernity in the kitchen-diner (Rolland Munro) Notes on contributors Index