Waste matters : new perspectives of food and society / edited by David Evans, Hugh Campbell and Anne Murcott.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A brief pre-history of food waste and the social sciences -- From risk to waste: global food waste regimes -- 'Waste? You mean by-products!' from bio-waste management to agro-ecology in Italian winemaking and beyond -- The performativity of food packaging: market devices, waste crisis and recycling -- Arbiters of waste: date labels, the consumer and knowing good, safe food -- Food, waste and safety: negotiating conflicting social anxieties into the practices of domestic provisioning -- Practising thrift at dinnertime: mealtime leftovers, sacrifice and family membership -- Food waste bins: bridging infrastructures and practices -- Eating from the bin: salmon heads, waste and the markets that make them -- Food waste in Australia: the freegan response -- A 'lasting transformation' of capitalist surplus: from food stocks to feedstocks -- The disposal of place: facing modernity in the kitchen-diner.

"This book offers the first framing of potential social science approaches to the compelling and yet hugely under-researched topic of food waste. Shows how the profile of waste has suddenly increased as a topic of sociological relevance and extends these developments to analyses of foodConceptualises waste as a dynamic category and one that plays an important role in processes of cultural and economic organisationBrings together theoretical and empirical contributions from a range of disciplinary perspectivesEngages with food waste in a number of contexts and at a variety of scalesExplores issues such as the regulation and governance of food systems; the materiality of foodstuffs and associated technologies; the dynamics of social practices and what goes on in domestic kitchens; the ways in which food and waste are circulated in societies; dumpster diving and freeganism, and socio-technical innovations for waste reductionDemonstrates how food waste is a useful lens through which to tend to a number of contemporary issues within sociology and social theory"--Publisher description.