Everyday foodways, an ingredient for good lives

In this introductory chapter, we outline the rationale for the book, which clearly identifies how everyday foodways, or “ways of doing food”, from consumption to production, have the potential to engender change, whether this is through structured training schemes or active inclusion in more informal arenas for people caught up in the criminal justice system. We provide a brief overview of desistance and the good lives model, which provided the original impetus for this collection, based on potential synergies between good food and good lives. The chapter further identifies a range of criminal justice settings in which research for this book has taken place, from within the prison estates of England and Wales, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, to a range of voluntary and community sector organisations (VCSOs) that work with people with criminal convictions. We provide outlines of each of the contributing chapters, with some concluding comments for future initiatives.