Available From UC Press

Retail Inequality examines the failure of recent efforts to improve Americans' diets by increasing access to healthy food. Based on exhaustive research, this book by Kenneth H. Kolb documents the struggles of two Black neighborhoods in Greenville, South Carolina. For decades, outsiders ignored residents' complaints about the unsavory retail options on their side of town—until the well-intentioned but flawed "food desert" concept took hold in popular discourse. Soon after, new allies arrived to help, believing that grocery stores and healthier options were the key to better health. These efforts, however, did not change neighborhood residents' food consumption practices. Retail Inequality explains why and also outlines the history of deindustrialization, urban public policy, and racism that are the cause of unequal access to food today. Kolb identifies retail inequality as the crucial concept to understanding today’s debates over gentrification and community development. As this book makes clear, the battle over food deserts was never about food—it was about equality.

Kenneth H. Kolb is Professor of Sociology at Furman University. He is the author of Moral Wages: The Emotional Dilemmas of Victim Advocacy and Counseling.

"In this excellent book, Kenneth H. Kolb argues that retail inequality is not some random economic aberration—rather, it is directly tied to policy and planning and it is also the private and public sector outcome of our inability to deal with our number one problem: race in America.”–––Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University

"This carefully researched book offers insight into why interventions to eliminate food deserts so often fail. Supermarkets matter—but not for the reasons we think. Kolb shows that the food desert fight is not mostly about food but about fairness and justice—and why everyone should care."––Sarah Bowen, author of Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It

"Why do some neighborhoods have pawn shops and payday lenders while others have organic grocery stores and cafes? Kolb tackles this question head-on and explains with clear and convincing prose how racist policies and practices have led to retail inequality in US cities. A must-read for anyone interested in food deserts in particular and urban inequality in general."––Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach

"This book offers a rich qualitative case study addressing the pressing question of why people and groups who have tried to fix food deserts have, for the most part, failed. Chapters are replete with important insights for scholars of contemporary food systems, consumption, neighborhoods, gentrification, and poverty. Kolb offers a distinctly sociological lens on this multifaceted problem, asking why interventions to bring supermarkets and good food projects have not succeeded at changing people's eating habits. He also encourages readers to rethink what and how we know what we know about food deserts and the desires of the people who live in them."––Michaela DeSoucey, author of Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food