Introduction: Crafting Revisions from Southern Food Culture

This chapter explores the current changes occurring within food culture, especially across the Southern United States, by grounding the South in current discussions within the sociology of food and food studies more generally, to explain the current attention of craft or artisanal industries that have made it possible for once struggling rural communities to establish a degree of financial stability. By tapping into consumer’s desires for local and slow food, these traditional preparation techniques and products are placed into the sphere of food as a form of an art world, and thus, embedded with knowledge that could be lost if people stop practicing these techniques. Overall, a majority of these producers are not the white, upwardly mobile producers found in urban areas, instead they are working class men and women from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds who rely on selling their product to sustain their families.