Southern Craft Food Diversity
Challenging the Myth of a US Food Revival
Using oral histories, this book highlights the voices, experiences and histories of marginalized groups from diverse communities who are the backbone of the artisanal food movement in the US.
Driven by consumers’ desire for slow and local food, craft breweries, traditional butchers, cheese makers and bakeries have been popping up across the US in the last twenty years. Typically urban and staffed predominantly by white middle class men, these industries are perceived as a departure from tradition and mainstream lifestyles. But this image obscures the diverse communities that have supported artisanal foods for centuries.
Using the oral histories of over 100 people, this book brings to light the voices, experiences, and histories of marginalized groups who keep Southern foodways alive. The larger than life stories of these individuals reveal the complex reality behind the movement and show how they are the backbone of the so-called "new explosion" of craft food.
Kaitland M. Byrd is Lecturer in Sociology at Virginia Tech and a visiting scholar at the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.
Author/Editor details at time of book publication.
We are a leading social science publisher
committed to making a difference.
Bristol University Press and
Policy Press
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk