Book review: Kravchenko S. A. Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Food: Risks, Vulnerabilities, Demand for Humanitarian Biopolitics: monograph (Moscow: MGIMO – University, 2014. 198 p.)

The reviewed monograph of S. A. Kravchenko examines the role of food in the formation and development of human society. Widely using the data of ethnography S. A. Kravchenko accents a number of problems that encourage readers to evaluate the importance of some causal-investigatory connectionsin a different way, not only with respect to the past but also to the present.For example, author focuses attention not on the food as a result and a sign of identity, but onits role in people’s identity formation. Not climate change is seen as a factor structuring eating process, but food production is seen as a factor of climate change.Not the economic status of social groups is considered as a factor of access to foodstuff, but the food as a marker of social status. The book reveals the urgency of the problem both at the global (the role of GMO, McDonaldization of food, biopolitics in contemporary conditions) and local levels (grocery factor in Russia’s national security, the availability of food to different categories of the population).Its relevance particularly increased in connection with the sanctionsconflict between Russia and the West in 2014–2015. Therefore, considerable attention in the reviewis paid to the reaction of civil society to thedecree of the RFPresidenton the destruction of products from the countries included into the sanctions list. Sanctions wars are the perfect illustration of biopolitical practice defined by S. Kravchenko as «applied aspects of biopolitical approaches and directions, as a rule, related to the regulation of food by the ruling elite». Theoretical thesis of S. A. Kravchenko monograph lay a good foundation for the development of programsfornew, including empirical, studies of the grocery security of the Russian Federation.