Sociology of Food
Author(s): Annechen Bahr Bugge 
What kind of activity is cooking? In the Norwegian food discourse the domestic cook is described as a scientist, an artist, an expert, a perfectionist, a patriot, a protector of nature, a politician, a gourmet, a good mother, a good wife and a domestic mistress. This makes daily cooking to something more than routinized housework, it is also a significant part of self presentation and identity formation. The material that will be presented is part of a doctoral project on the process of establishing food habits. An aim of the project is to get an understanding of what roles cooking has in everyday life. A characteristic trend in domestic cookery the last decades is the increase in the use of foreign and commercial food products, kitchen technology and cooking utensils. Cooking has become fashionable. Food processors, blenders, pasta-/coffee-/bread-machines are typical examples of necessities in middle class kitchens. However, there is little that indicates that this has saved time and labour, but rather has led to higher demands on the domestic cook when it comes to creativity and complexity. This is also due to the fact that cooking has shifted from a back stage activity more to a front stage activity. The ideal kitchen of the 50s was a closed working room, while the ideal of today is more open, available and informal. Food-programs on TV is also seen in association with this process. When food-programs first came in the 60s they reflected the goals of the Norwegian food policies. Cookery was portrayed as a serious activity and the TV-cook made sensible and traditional food. Today the most popular food-programs show cooking more as entertainment and self presentation.
Author(s): Tanja Kamin and Blanka Tivadar
The
paper presents first, qualitative phase of the research on food related
consumer concerns in Slovenia. 5 (focus) group discussions were preformed,
38 informants have been interviewed. Firstly, the paper discusses
informants´ most often mentioned concerns, which have been categorized in
11 groups: a) concerns about food ingredients and specific foodstuffs, b)
concerns about food preparation and family relations, c) concerns about
hazards brought about by scientific and technical advancements in the area
of food growing and production d) neophobia, e) body-related concerns, f)
concerns about micro-biological safety of food, g) concerns about
infection with BSE agent, h) ethical concerns, i) financial concerns, j)
etiquette/formal concerns and k) health related concerns. Secondly, it
explores ways in which food related concerns influence individuals' food
shopping, cooking and eating and finally, it analyses strategies
informants use to cope with uncertainty e.g. ignoring information,
avoiding certain food, occasional diets, buying meat from known sources,
symbolical changes in food consumption, convincing her/himself that
"good habits" (e.g. eating honey or apple first thing in the
morning, eating at least one hot meal in a day etc.) can prevent the
majority of serious diseases. Author(s): Evgenia
Poretskina
One of the consequences of the process of liberalization of
economy in Russia of recent decade was the filling of inner food market
with imported food-stuffs. Simultaneously the system of the attitudes
towards domestic and foreign food-stuffs began to form. It has gone over
the different stages: from the attractiveness of new instilled tastes to
the conscious choice and preference. The peculiarities of the system of
the attitudes towards domestic and foreign food-stuffs in Russia will be
studied in the paper. We divided all attitudes into three groups according
the influenced factors: risk-reducing, national (patriotic) and
situational. The risk-reducing attitude is tightly connected with healthy
way of life and it often based on the availability of consumer
information; as a rule in this case the consumer chooses the food of
domestic origin as the less harmful. The national attitude usually is
connected with national gustatory traditions, and in the recent time with
patriotic mood in the society. The positive national attitude toward
Russian food-stuff has significantly increased during the 90-th. The
situational attitude is the most moderate one, when the consumer doesn't
declare certain preferences and chooses the food-stuffs according to the
concrete situation. Each of the attitudes has its own peculiar character
in up-to-date Russian society and connected with many economic, social and
cultural factors. The reasons of every attitude, its display in the
everyday practices will be studied on the empirical material, consisted of
100 semi-structured interviews with Russian families focused on their life
strategies, made in 1998-2000. Author(s): Antje Springer and Georgios Papastefanou
Uses and applications of modern biotechnology especially genetic
engineering of food products led to controversial public debate in western
cultures. Rejection of GM food seems to prevail but there are marked
differences between nations. In the EU e.g. overall 73 % of the population
are rejecting GM food. Beside the group of countries who are close to the
EU average like Sweden, Spain, Westgermany, Ireland, Belgium and North
Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Denkmark, France and Greece show an
above-average rate of rejection, with Greece showing the highest. Italy,
Luxembourg, Eastgermany, Finland, Greatbritain and the Netherlands are
showing a below average rate of rejection, with the Netherlands and
Greatbritain (about 57 %) showing the lowest rejection rate in the
European Union. The national differences are clear cut, but is
explanations of the differences are somehow vague, relating mainly on a
kind of north-south european disparities. In our analysis we are trying to
quantify the amount of differences being due to socio-economic structural
differences in contrast to subejctive belief and knowledge on gm food. We
do this by estimating regression equations separately for each country in
EU, based on data of Eurobarometer 1999. Thereby empirical results on
reasons of intraeuropean variation in gm food attitudes are provided,
which might be helpful to built on a theoretical socio-cultural approach
of intersocietal disparities. Author(s): Johanna Mäkelä
Changes like industrialisation and urbanisation, the position of women, and globalisation have left their marks on our eating practices. In the Western world, the field of eating is more fragmented than ever despite the fact that the differences between social groups have diminished. The gained luxury of choice allows the pondering of questions related to quality, healthfulness, safety, ethics and politics of food we eat. At the same time there is an ongoing discussion on disruption of eating patterns as a generally shared whole of rules and practices. The field of eating is splintered and full of contradictions. It is possible to explore these contradictions with concepts such as gender, class, age and life phase. Nevertheless, with six conceptual oppositions I try to pinpoint the complexity of present eating practices beyond these traditional concepts. The oppositions in my presentation are convenience vs. culinarism, health vs. pleasure, ethical vs. egoistic eating, dangerous vs. safe food, eating alone vs. eating together, natural vs. technological food. In everyday life these dichotomies occur in parallel and they do not exclude the effect of socio-demographic factors. The ambivalence of the post-modern life and the complexity of making choices is crystallised in the multidimensionality of eating practices. Few people are directly involved in food production but consumers are paying more attention to the methods and conditions of production than ever. The choice of food has become a form of political and moral statement making.
Author(s): Juha
Hedman, Osmo Kivinen and Jonna Nurmi
In this paper we
focus on analysing malnutrition in different stages of the lifespan and
compare health hazards deriving from malnutrition in different countries.
As income levels and life expectancy rises, and populations become more
urban, countries face different forms of malnutrition and consequently
shifts in disease patterns. We study how the consequences of malnutrition
over the lifespan are dealt with in different countries and what the
optimal mechanisms of control are. Malnutrition, operationalised as
un-optimal calorie intake, is subdivided into three different forms of
health hazards: undernutrition, overconsumption and lifestyle-related
diseases. In our framework the different components of malnutrition are
placed on the individual lifespan. Our panel data covers 51 countries and
10 age cohorts comprising a total of 510 observations (individual stages
of life). We utilise statistics from the UN and its special agencies FAO
and WHO. By using the results of logistic regression to compute risk
analysis, we measure and compare various mechanisms of controlling
malnutrition. As our results show, in childhood the focus of malnutrition
is mainly on undernutrition and the key question is construction (access
to food). In adulthood the focus is on overconsumption, the key question
being prevention (access to income). When reaching old age,
lifestyle-related diseases become the primary focus and the key question
is treatment (access to health care). Author(s): Mari Niva
Food production and consumption in modern
society are characterised by many competing yet interrelated developments.
One of these relates to health aspects, which appear more and more
dominant in the context of food. At the same time, new technologies, such
as biotechnology, enable new production methods and new kinds of foods.
However, this technologisation of food may induce new risks and bring new
elements into the discussion of trust in food. Technologisation is in
close connection to what might be called scientification of food and
eating, referring to the increasingly salient role of scientific knowledge
in food and food production. In many new foods, such as genetically
modified and functional foods, the aspects of health, technology and
science coalesce in interesting ways. This presentation is based on my
ongoing doctoral thesis in consumer economics. In the thesis, I analyse
consumers and new foods from the perspective of everyday knowledge. By
using the concept of everyday knowledge I explore consumers'
interpretations and views of new foods and their ways of conceptualising
scientific and other forms of knowledge relating to food and eating. The
study uses both qualitative and quantitative data about consumers and
foods produced with new technologies. My presentation will look into the
concept of everyday knowledge in the context of new foods and reflect on
the relation between scientification of eating and conventional views on
food, diet and health. Secondly, I will discuss the implications of
technologisation with respect to the discussion of risks of and trust in
food. Author(s): Paloma Herrera Racionero and Cecilia Díaz
Méndez
This paper tries to do a critical analysis focused on the main
Spanish statistics about food consumption: Household Budget Survey and the
Consumption Panel of Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and Food (MAPA). We
think their limits offer a new framework in order to understand food
consumption and eating habits, their permanence and change. These
statistical sources provide the possibility of knowing the market process
or the market trends but it can't offer us a global knowledge about the
social bases of food and eating behavior. HOW FOOD BECAME A RISK The role of medicine and politics in
shaping modern eating is often overlooked in sociology. This paper uses a
Foucaultian discourse analysis to look at how food and eating has been
problematised in Sweden in medical and political documents over the last
two centuries and what strategies, techniques and apparatuses have been
developed to solve these problems. Three qualitatively different
historical medico/political approaches to food and eating are identified:
an economising approach, a "nutritional-hygiene" approach and
finally a risk-management approach. It is argued that nutritional science
has been been closely involved in setting the agenda for as well as
legitimising a number of political concerns and interventions for more
than a century. Finally it is argued that we have to understand the modern
concern with food risks not as a reaction to an essential state of the
modern world but as a discursive effect to a large extent generated by the
medical discouse around food.