“Eating isn’t just swallowing food”: Food practices in the context of social class trajectory

Abstract

Drawing from a qualitative study with 105 families across Canada, this paper focuses on sixteen households in which one or more adults experienced significant social class trajectories in their lifetimes. Using semi-structured interviews and two photo-elicitation techniques, adults and teens articulated their perceptions of healthy eating, eating well, conflicts and struggles around food, and typical household food patterns. This analysis examines how habitus from class of origin can influence food dispositions, as well as how participants used food and talk about food to mark symbolic and moral boundaries on the basis of class. In particular, people used discourses of cosmopolitan and omnivorous eating, ethical eating, and healthy eating, as well as the moral virtue of frugality, to align or disidentify with class of origin or current class location. Our analysis shows that food can be a powerful symbolic means of marking class boundaries.

Fruit and Vegetable Purchases in Farmer’s Market Stands: Analysing Survey and Sales Data

“…They also consume fewer fruits and vegetables (FV) [4,5], which is associated with non-communicable diseases such as obesity [6]. They may also be more dependent on their immediate surroundings and on public transit for food supplies [7][8][9][10][11][12][13], due to limited financial and material resources (e.g., access to a car). Promising strategies to increase access to FV in disadvantaged neighbourhoods with poor access to healthy foods include opening farmers' markets, or at a smaller scale, FV stands and mobile vendors [14].…”

Ecological food practices and identity performance on Cape Breton Island

“…Food practices are thus power laden: taste, etiquette, and culinary knowledge are forms of cultural capital that demarcate class distinctions and sustain social hierarchies (Beagan, Power, & Chapman, 2015;Bourdieu, 1984). Our associations with food, then, are complex cultural productions that are not necessarily empowering but that nonetheless offer possibilities for negotiating meaningful forms of identity and community.…”

“…Newcomers' dissatisfaction suggests different tastes and expectations among urban and rural residents that give rise to differing perceptions of urban and rural places. Urban areas are typically defined as cultured and cosmopolitan while rural areas, in comparison, are picturesque and homogeneous Beagan, Power & Chapman, 2015;Thorpe, 2012;Everett, 2009). …”

“…What does the ecological food movement look like in this region? How do people self-identify with this movement and how do they create a distinctive culture (Beagan, Power, & Chapman, 2015;Johnston, Szabo, & Rodney, 2011)? Ecological food practices tend to uphold discourses that critique the industrial food system and promote local, organic, and fair trade foods as tastier, healthier, more environmentally sustainable, and more socially equitable than mass-produced foods sold in commercial grocery outlets (Lynch & Giles, 2013;Pilgeram, 2012;Shugart, 2014). Localecological food discourses deepen this discourse by illuminating the mutually dependent relationships between producers and consumers, and among people, animals, and natural environments (Aucoin & Fry, 2015;Feagan, 2007;Glowacki-Dudka, Murray & Isaacs, 2012;Sumner & Wever, 2015).…”

The perceived cosmopolitan consumption of globally mobile, young consumers from China

“…For example, scholars explore transformations in consumer identities following globalization, travel, and new occupational paths that are transferrable across cultural contexts (Thompson and Tambyah, 1999;Bardhi et al, 2010;Bardhi et al, 2012;Brembeck et al, 2015;Figueiredo and Uncles, 2015). Beyond consumers' experience with spatial, geographical mobility, moving consumption research also addresses consumers' vertical (upward or downward) social mobility (e.g., see Hamilton and Catterall, 2006;Beagan et al, 2015). Friedman (2014), for instance, reviews studies of consumers' subjective experiences in vertical social mobility and calls for more scholarly attention to be paid to how mobility affects individual well-being.…”