News and Events
More  >>
Ongoing
27 Jan 2025
Encyclopedia launched the Academic Video Service in April, utilizing advanced technology to transform scholarly articles into engaging academic videos, enhancing the presentation of scientific research. These videos use simple and captivating animations to communicate academic findings to a broader audience.Since its inception, the Academic Video Service has seen enthusiastic participation from scholars and partnerships with various journals like Cancers, Animals, Entropy, Remote Sensing, Nanomaterials and so on. In 2024, we collaborated with over 70 scholars to produce more than 100 video abstracts. We have received positive feedback from scholars and seek further suggestions on video quality. To enhance video quality, we've selected the most acclaimed videos of 2024 and invite Encyclopedia users to vote for the best one and share their valuable feedback. We greatly appreciate your active participation and support! Vote for the best video abstract: https://forms.gle/NaRvHTq8KLb7b4249 To apply for video service: https://encyclopedia.pub/video_material
Journal Encyclopedia - Peer-Reviewed Content
More  >>
Encyclopedia 2025, 5(1), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia5010022

The anthropology of food is a sub-field of cultural anthropology interested in studying food and foodways. This article provides a concise overview of the anthropology of food, tracing its development from the early twentieth century to contemporary debates and emerging research trajectories. Drawing on foundational work by figures such as Boas and Malinowski, it shows how early anthropologists approached food as integral to understanding social organization, kinship, and cultural meaning. As the field evolved, structuralist, materialist, feminist, and political-economic perspectives broadened its scope, highlighting the symbolic significance of cuisine, the interplay between environment and subsistence, and the pivotal role of gender and class in shaping food practices. In recent decades, the anthropology of food has engaged intensively with globalization, investigating how transnational flows reshape culinary identities, local economies, and cultural heritage, as well as other significant topics. At the same time, emerging themes—such as multispecies perspectives, sensory studies, and the application of innovative methodologies—offer new lenses for understanding how food mediates relationships between humans, non-human beings, and environments. By examining case studies spanning regions from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, this article illustrates how contemporary anthropologists use food as a prism to investigate cultural identity, social change, ethical relations, and the complex entanglements of local and global food systems.

See what people are saying about us
Dr. Shlomi Agmon
I believe video abstract is an excellent idea for both readers and authors. Indeed, it provides potential readers with a tool to quickly understand what the work is about. That is important for casualreaders, whose time is thus spared, and for invested readers, for whom it makes the decision to say ‘yes, I want to read the paper’ much simpler.
School of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel
Dr. Ignacio Cea
For the video abstracts, the papers and authors could gain more visibility and increase citations. Also, it means a more diverse and interesting way of communicating research, which is something valuable in itself.
Center for Research, Innovation and Creation, and Faculty of Religious Sciences and Philosophy, Temuco Catholic University
Patricia Jovičević-Klug
I am really impressed by the final video (produced by Encyclopedia Video team). I was a little bit worried about what the final video would be like, because of the topic, but you made the magic come true again with this video.
Department of Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering, Max-Planck-Institute for Iron Research, Max-Planck-Str. 1, 40237 Düsseldorf, Germany
Video Production Service