Towards an Eliasian Understanding of Food in the Twenty-First Century

This introductory chapter positions this edited collection in the sociology of food literature. Tracing the emergence of the subdiscipline from the late 1970s onwards, it looks at early influences and the impact of Norbert Elias on the work of Stephen Mennell and others. This includes an exploration of Elias’s key theoretical ideas, his empirical investigations of treatises on good manners, and an outline of Mennell’s work on the history of food in England and France. The final part of the chapter introduces the chapters that follow.