In today’s fast-paced, fast-food world, everyone seems to be eating alone, all the time – whether it’s at their desks or in the car. Carolan argues that this needs to change if we want healthy, equitable, and sustainable food. We can no longer afford to ignore human connections as we struggle with dire problems like hunger, obesity, toxic pesticides, antibiotic resistance, depressed rural economies, and low-wage labor. In No One Eats Alone he tells stories of people getting together to change their relationship to food and to each other, from community farms where suburban moms and immigrant families work side by side to online exchanges where entrepreneurs share kitchen space to “hackers” who trade information about farm machinery repairs. This is how real change happens, Carolan contends, when we start acting like citizens first and consumers second.
Dr. Carolan is a professor and the chair of the department of sociology at Colorado State University. He has published over 100 peer review articles and chapters. His areas of expertise include environmental and agricultural law and policy, environmental sociology, the sociology of food systems and agriculture, and the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge. He also dabbles in social theory. He recently published the following books: A Sociological Look at Biofuels: Understanding the Past/Prospects for the Future; Decentering Biotechnology: Assemblages Built and Assemblages Masked; Embodied Food Politics; The Real Cost of Cheap Food; The Sociology of Food and Agriculture; Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues; Reclaiming Food Security; Cheaponomics: The High Cost of Low Prices; Food Utopias: Reimagining Citizenship, Ethics and Community (with Paul Stock and Chris Rosin); and Biological Economies: Experimentation and the Politics of Agrifood Frontiers (with Richard LeHeron, Hugh Campbell, and Nick Lewis). Dr. Carolan is also the co-editor of the Journal of Rural Studies.
1 Being Gastro-Intentional
2 Monocultures of the Mind and Body
3 Knowing Quality
4 Shaping Values
5 Spatial Distance Versus Social Distance
6 One Health
7 From Slow Food to Connectivity
8 Buying Behaviors Versus Building Community
9 Getting Big Versus Getting Together
10 Conclusion: Becoming Citizens
