Sociology of Food and Eating

Portrayal of the Slow Food movement in the Australian print media Conviviality, localism and romanticism

by John Germov

John Germov
Lauren Williams
Maria Freij
ournal of Sociology, March 2011; vol. 47, 1: pp. 89-106.

‘Menu Wielkiego Króla: antyczni Grecy o perskich ucztach’

by Bogdan Burliga

[w:] Historia naturalna jedzenia. Między antykiem a XIX wiekiem, red. B. Możejko, Gdańsk 2012 (w druku)

On Cooking and Eating by Ivy Helman

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

In patriarchal heterosexist societies women do most if not all of the cooking for their families.  Women are also... more In patriarchal heterosexist societies women do most if not all of the cooking for their families.  Women are also usually assigned the tasks of cleaning, raising children, tending the family garden, gathering water and anything else that is considered part and parcel of caring for the family.  These feminine tasks are often devalued compared to the activities men spend their time doing.  I wholeheartedly support the reevaluation of the significance of these tasks and the movement toward shared responsibility for family life among heterosexual couples, however that is not what I want to discuss today.

"Eatig together: The hidden story of the ISSRPL"

by Rahel Regina Wasserfall

Published in Practical Matters May 2012

Material Connectivity, the Immaterial and the Aesthetic of Eating Practices: An Argument for How Genetically Modified Foodstuff Becomes Inedible

by Emma Roe

Published in Environment and Planning A 2006.

Concern about eating biotechnologically produced foodstuffs is embedded within the complex relationship between food,... more Concern about eating biotechnologically produced foodstuffs is embedded within the complex relationship between food, science, politics, and everyday eating practices. In this paper I consider how this concern is expressed less at the reflexive level of opinions and attitudes and more at the nonreflexive level of eating practices. Therefore, I draw upon literatures that talk of a practical everyday aesthetic and literatures that assert the significance of the material to geographical work, and go on to argue for the significance of a material connective aesthetic within eating practices. This argument is developed empirically and theoretically by considering to what extent consumers can discuss the edibility of different types of carrots in terms of superficial material qualities, integral material qualities, and the immaterial. Crucially, the process of edibility formation is thus understood as relationally embedded in the material environment. This provokes a realisation for an ethics and a politics of (im)material connectivities. This work contributes to geographical work in which an embodied affective ethic is employed, by arguing that the transversal qualities of the material are as significant as the transversal qualities of `affect'. It is relevant to those studying consumption, biogeographies, and nonreflexive practices.

Things Becoming Food and the Embodied, Material Practices of An Organic Food Consumer

by Emma Roe

Published in Sociologia Ruralis

The challenge to study the embodied, practical experience of consumption is attracting increasing interest in... more The challenge to study the embodied, practical experience of consumption is attracting increasing interest in agro-food studies (Lockie 2002). This paper argues for attention to be turned towards the bodies of animals, plants and humans, materially connected through the agro-food network, to enable a study of the embodied, practical experience of consumption. This paper apprehends the relationship between humans and nonhumans in two empirical examples from the agro-food network through applying a ‘relational materialist’ (Thrift 1999) approach. This approach is worked through by drawing upon the concepts of ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979; 1982) and ‘intercorporeality’ (Weiss 1999) and through introducing the concept of ‘things becoming food’. A live art performance of sushi being made is discussed to show how embodied practices materially transform the fish into sushi, from production to consumption. Excerpts from the video diary of an organic food consumer and his talk are compared to explore the practice of eating or not eating between potato and human. The findings contribute to debates on nonhuman methodologies, embodied consumption practices, food quality and the intimate material connections between bodies that eat and bodies that are eaten.

Commodifying Animal Welfare

by Emma Roe

Co-authored with Henry Buller, University of Exeter, Published in Animal Welfare 2012 Vol 21 (S1) 131-135

As the profile of farm animal welfare rises within food production chains, in response both to consumer demand and... more As the profile of farm animal welfare rises within food production chains, in response both to consumer demand and greater ethical engagement with the lives of animals, animal welfare is increasingly being commodified by various foodchain actors. That is to say that, over and above regulatory or assurance scheme compliance, welfare conditions and criteria are being used as a ‘value-added’ component or distinctive selling point for food products, brands or even particular manufacturers and retailers. We argue in this paper that such a commodification process has major implications both for the way in which farm animal welfare is defined and assessed (with greater emphasis being placed either on those welfare elements that lend themselves to commodification processes or on those that respond to consumer interpretations of what ‘good’ welfare might be at a particular time) and for the ways in which farm animal welfare is articulated and presented to food consumers as a component of product value or quality.

Covert distinction: how hipsters practice food-based resistance strategies in the production of identity

by James M. Cronin

Co-authored with PhD supervisors Dr. Mary McCarthy & Dr. Alan Collins, published in Consumption, Markets & Culture

This paper reveals the processes by which food is used to express resistance to the mainstream and perform identity... more This paper reveals the processes by which food is used to express resistance to the mainstream and perform identity work within the hipster community of consumption. Based on the findings of a qualitative investigation, several resistance strategies involving food emerged: Vegetarian choices; Brand choices and avoidances; and Decommodification practices. We discuss how these strategies are framed by hipsters' discursive distaste for the commercial food marketing system but are, in practice, operationalised as subtle ways to achieve proper representation of their collective identity within the marketplace. Mundane consumption emerges as motor-force in allowing these consumers to surreptitiously maintain distinction and to protect their within-group identity from mainstream co-optation. We conclude by suggesting that the inconspicuous nature of mundane consumables such as food and alcohol products allows for idiosyncratic shared community performances that are covert and difficult for broader social currents to detect and co-opt.

Of Food and Friendship: A Method for Understanding Eating Disorders in India

by Tanja Ahlin

Forthcoming in Medische Antropologie 24 (1), June 2012 (special issue on 'Ethnography and self-exploration').

Studies of eating disorders in general and of anorexia nervosa in particular are abundant in Western countries and... more Studies of eating disorders in general and of anorexia nervosa in particular are abundant in Western countries and perspectives on causes are plentiful. However, in South Asia this condition has not been investigated extensively. During my voluntary work in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand I forged a friendship with a young woman with disordered eating. Her condition seemed much more complex and multi-layered than suggested by the literature I could find on the topic. In this article, I describe the methods I used to examine the various meanings of “being too weak and thin” in rural India through an ethnographic case study. In particular, I give an account of the friendship I developed with my informant, the implications it had on the choice of this research topic, and the ways in which it helped me understand my informant’s condition better. While friendship is by no means an unproblematic method in the social sciences, it proved to be a highly valuable approach in this study.
[friendship as method, self-reflection, ethnographic case study, eating disorders, India, personal narrative]

Ulusaşırılaşma ve Mutfak

by Ebru Yetiskin

Internalization of Ethnicities through Food: Migrants in Contact Zone in Japan

by Daisuke Yasui

Constructionist theorists have debated the nature of ethnicity as a social construct, and have therefore failed to... more Constructionist theorists have debated the nature of ethnicity as a social construct, and have therefore failed to explain why fictional ethnicity provides the motive power to engage in ethnic collective action. This study investigates the process of internalizing ethnicity to examine how ethnic minorities find and feel the reality of their ethnicity by researching the ethnic food of migrants. My data are based on fieldwork and interviews conducted in many immigrant communities in Tsurumi Ward, Yokohama. My analysis shows the process of ethnicity internalization with each stage of migration. I found that migrants make their ethnicity authentic and intimate through their ethnic food. This study discusses implications for concrete food and abstract ethnicity.

Madden, H., Chamberlain, K. (2010). Nutritional health, subjectivity and resistance: Women's accounts of dietary practices. Health, 14(3), 292-309.

by Kerry Chamberlain

DOI: 10.1177/1363459309356073

Media representations of food are ubiquitous in contemporary society, and healthy eating features predominantly in... more Media representations of food are ubiquitous in contemporary society, and healthy eating features predominantly in such texts. This study explores the discursive construction of food and healthy eating in texts appearing in popular women’s magazines, and examines the variety of positions and subjectivities offered to women readers of these texts. We find that such texts present quite complex constructions of nutritional health, based on scientific and biomedical discourses of nutrition interwoven with discourses of morality, feminine beauty and mothering. We conclude that these texts offer a conflictual space for women to traverse in efforts to position themselves as good mothers and moral and healthy eaters.

PRL na talerzu: Rzeczywistość kulinarna Polski Ludowej (Propozycja projektu badawczego) «Peoples Poland on the Plate: Culinary Reality in Communist

by Grzegorz Piotrowski

published in Nationalities Affairs (Sprawy Narodowościowe), issue: 28 / 2006, pages: 143158

This article sketches some of the main directions in which research could go,
mentioning the most important... more This article sketches some of the main directions in which research could go,
mentioning the most important issues that construct the social reality of those times,
mainly regarding food as a research subject. By trying to reconstruct social realities
(especially food consumption patterns) more than just a simple ethnographical description
is given; questions raised about the relations between everyday life and official
state propaganda can also be answered. Furthermore, issues connected with
gender studies (such as the position of women in the household hierarchy, their control
over food flows and their associated responsibility) and family life and structure
are considered.
The aim to create the New Man, as defined by communist propaganda, was one
of the leading aims of such propaganda, especially in the 1950s. Moving the responsibility
for most of the decisions from an individual level to the level of society had
also its influence on food, which became a social issue. Because of this, the state tried
to take responsibility for feeding people by establishing cheap, subsidised food bars
and canteens in schools and workplaces. That situation inevitably lead to confrontation
with tradition and traditional images connected to food and its consumption.

Placeres externos, disgustos internos. Percepciones de la alteridad, interacciones gastronómicas y conflictos ideológicos e identitarios en la Atenas del siglo IV a.C.

by Fernando Notario

Published in: Cerro, C. et alii (2012); Ideología, identidades e interacción en el Mundo Antiguo, Madrid.

• Lupton, D. and Chapman, S. (1995) ‘A healthy lifestyle might be the death of you’: discourses on diet, cholesterol control and heart disease in the press and among the lay public. Sociology of Health & Illness, 17(4), 477--94.

by Deborah Lupton

• Lupton, D. (1994) Food, memory and meaning: the symbolic and social nature of food events. The Sociological Review, 42(4), 664--85.

by Deborah Lupton

Food, risk and subjectivity.

by Deborah Lupton

In Williams, S., Gabe, J. and Calnan, M. (2000) (eds), Health,Medicine and Society: Key Theories, Future Agendas. London: Routledge, pp. 205--18.

A history of picnics at world's fairs

by Van Troi Tran

DRAFT COPY Please do not copy or quote without permission

Foods and Gods

by Juliana Ossa

Culture and the politics of alternative food networks

by Geoffrey Craig