Cuisine, Health and Table Manners: Food Boundaries and Forms of Distinction among Primary School Children

Abstract

Using data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in two primary school canteens, this article investigates how pupils from different social origins perform and embody social class through food knowledge and demeanour. I employ Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to highlight three main oppositions concerning children’s relationship with food, which are rooted in the social and material environment of their families. Their gastronomic horizons (wide versus narrow), their awareness of the links between nutrients and health (specific versus general) and their embodiment of table manners (etiquette versus ludic) unveil how children’s dispositions are simultaneously structured by familial endowments and actively at work in the construction of social divisions.

Conflicting experiences of health and habitus in a poor urban neighbourhood: A Bourdieusian ethnography

“…Work on how economic disadvantage becomes embodied in ways of being and thinking has been conceptual (e.g. Frohlich & Abel, 2014; Williams, 1995) as well as empirical, illustrated by two recent studies on how the eating habits of families with young children were shaped by necessities transformed into tastes (Hoeeg et al 2020; Oncini, 2020). In this article, we have explored not only the constraining but also the enabling aspects of habitus in a poor neighbourhood, the latter being much less discussed.…”

“…The residents’ orientation towards the local setting or field illustrates their lack of privilege in that they did not have physical and financial means to venture beyond St Ann's, although this was also something that for most of them was natural and convivial, or using Bourdieu's term they had made a virtue out of necessity (Bourdieu, 1977). Yet the ‘choice of the necessary’ (Oncini, 2020) in St Ann's is not solely constrained by economic necessity and represents considerable ingenuity in creating a sense of wellbeing from the resources available. In this respect for older adults, activists and those with caring responsibilities, the neighbourhood also provided them with important services and infrastructure, which contributed to their own sense of health and wellbeing, such as the community centre, food bank and walkways.…”

“…Bourdieu's theory on habitus has been used in sociology of health to explain the obduracy of class‐based poor lifestyles, which articulate ‘pre‐disposed, yet seemingly “naturalised” ways of thinking, feeling and acting’ (Williams, 1995: pp. 585–586, also Hoeeg et al 2020; Oncini, 2020). Frohlich and Abel (2014) observe that different groups have different amounts of economic (material resources), social (networks) and cultural (knowledge, skills) capital, which are all implicated in habitus, and call for a shift in focus from individual behaviour to improving people's capital or capabilities for making health‐enhancing choices.…”

“…Bourdieu is frequently used in medical sociology to highlight how poor people's lifestyle is constrained by their habitus (e.g. Abel & Frolich, 2012; Hoeeg et al, 2020; Oncini, 2020; Williams, 1995). The article discusses how patterns of habitus and distinctions in poor neighbourhoods complicate notions of healthy behaviours or lifestyles and also shine new conceptual light on the enabling, constraining and differentiating nature of habitus in relation to health.…”

Researching children’s food practices in contexts of deprivation: ethical and methodological challenges

“…This scarcity is even more visible in the context of low-income and food poor families. However, in recent years, new research has started to tackle problems of food poverty and food inequalities among children, in a new context of food poverty (Oncini, 2020;Wills & O'Connell, 2018). Indeed, food poverty in the Global North is emerging as an urgent social and moral concern.…”