1

SO2003 Lecture 6:Perspectives on Food and Feeding

9 October, 2006

2

Lecture Outline

Perspectives on food and feeding– Nutritional science

– Structuralist

– Materialist

– Post-structuralist Food and subjectivity

3

Food and Feeding Saturated by social meanings Mark social boundaries Structure everyday life Central to subjectivity Fundamental to

embodiment

4

Nutritional Science

Dietary control has only recently been conceptualised as a health issue– The civilising process (Mennell 1985)– Slimming (Stearns 1997)

Nutritional science developed from the mid-nineteenth century– Concerned with class-based dietary practices– Dominated by discourses of rational

management

5

Nutritional science Relates eating practices to the body’s

physical functioning Preferences are relevant only in their

implications for nutrition – Culture can undermine innate knowledge

about ‘good’ food Problematic inattention to the social

meanings of food– Eating bound up with other pleasurable

experiences and sensations– Food habits are dynamic and open to change

6

Structuralism Focuses on the rules that contribute to

social order Approach to eating practices addresses

their social uses and internal structures Claude Levi-Strauss

– Food is a system of communication with its own rules and codes

» Food dichotomies (e.g., raw vs. cooked) are linked to cultural dichotomies (e.g., nature vs. culture)

7

Structuralism Mary Douglas

– Food categories mark out social boundaries/classifications

» Some foods considered ‘polluting’ (Purity and Danger, 1966)

– Foods structure social events» Ordering of meals: daily, weekly and yearly» Adopting ‘new’ foods (Bradby 1997; Goode

et al. 1994)

– Food categories demarcate social groups– Lack of attention to power relations

8

Materialist/conflict approaches Focus on macro-level processes of inequality Social class and economics largely determine

eating practices Power relations are central to these analyses

– State and food industry (Jenkins 1991)– Gender and family dynamics (Adams 1990;

Orbach 1988; Wolf 1990) Little explanation for social change

– Conceptualisation of power/domination

9

Post-structuralism Concerned with the ways that ‘truths’ are

generated– Power is productive as well as oppressive– It is present in all aspects of social life and

relationships Views power/domination as ‘partial’

– Women’s dieting (Lupton 1996) Emphasises historical context

– The meaning of foods (like sugar) is variable and changing (Mintz 1986)

10

Food and subjectivity Food brings the outer world into the body

(Bahktin 1984)– Rituals around food reflect its potential danger

(Iossifides 1992) The symbolic values of food are

incorporated as part of the self (Falk 1994)– Group identity– Symbolic consumption (Featherstone 1990)