After many decades, if not centuries, of neglect of fine food and high-level restaurants in Britain, we are seeing a massive explosion of interest in food, cooking, and dining out. Christel Lane's book charts the process of this transformation and examines top contemporary restaurants and their chefs. The Cultivation of Taste presents a comparative study of Michelin-starred restaurants in Britain and Germany, focusing on two countries without an indigenous haute cuisine but which nevertheless have developed internationally reputed fine-dining sectors, and comparing their development to the fine-dining culture in France. Written from a sociological perspective, chefs are portrayed as part of a complex network, in their relationships with their employees, their customers, gastronomic critics, suppliers of food, and even their financiers. It will appeal to academics in the areas of economic and cultural sociology, and those with an interest in small entrepreneurial firms and their work relations, but also to all those who have an interest in fine-dining restaurants and the chef patrons at the centre of them.The book draws on a large number of interviews with renowned chefs, diners, and Michelin inspectors to provide an unprecedented insight into what goes on in Michelin-starred restaurants--what makes their chefs tick, intrigues their critics, and beguiles or annoys their customers. Restaurants are viewed not simply as businesses but as cultural enterprises that shape our taste in food, ambience, and sociality.

Product Description: The economic crisis that began in 2008 has underscored the impact not only of embedded and assumed ways of managing the economy, but also that present circumstances are the product of a long period of experimentation and bounded diversity; it is understanding the nature of both that forms a central concern of this collection...read more

This original book is the first to offer a wide-ranging study of trust within and between organizations from the perspective of several social and management sciences. The specially commissioned contributions, many from well-known experts combine theoretical analysis of problems around trust with empirical study in a range of different organizations in contexts such as China, Japan, India, the US, as well as several European countries. The wide theoretical scope, together with the range of organizational settings and the rich empirical detail of behavior around trust and opportunism, make this an important and instructive volume. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Industry and Society in Europe examines changes in industrial organization in Britain, Germany and France from the perspectives of economic sociology and political economy. This important new textbook presents a systematic, comparative analysis of recent processes of industrial and social change in these societies and assesses the contribution each country will make to the emerging European social and economic entity...read more

Product Description: Book by Lane, Christel

Product Description: Although considerable attention has been paid to those cultural revolutions which result in fundamental social upheavals, the less spectacular silent cultural revolutions which leave the existing social structure intact, focusing instead on the behavioural dimension of ideology, have been neglected...read more

Product Description: Although considerable attention has been paid to those cultural revolutions which result in fundamental social upheavals, the less spectacular silent cultural revolutions which leave the existing social structure intact, focusing instead on the behavioural dimension of ideology, have been neglected...read more