Food studies: between knowledge of everyday life and agribusiness impasses

Abstract

Studies on food history include the survival of peoples and individuals, but they can be approached analytically, at a micro or a macro level. A culinary approach focuses on the history of everyday life and human sensitivities. In the history of agribusiness and the food industry, we will look at the depletion of natural resources, in a systemic irrationality that undermines environmental sustainability, that is, the metabolism between humanity and nature. The article focuses on a few authors who sought to situate the history of these ecologic and social imbalances during the agricultural and industrial revolutions, especially Michael Pollan and John Bellamy Foster, and in the history of everyday life, studies by Luce Giard.