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Article summary: The framing of social class distinctions through family food and eating practices - Wills, W., Backett-Milburn, K., Roberts, M. -., & Lawton, J. (2011)$3.24
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Article summary: The framing of social class distinctions through family food and eating practices - Wills, W., Backett-Milburn, K., Roberts, M. -., & Lawton, J. (2011)
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Course
Lifestyle And Consumption (CHL20806)
Institution
Wageningen University (WUR)
This is a summary of the article The framing of social class distinctions through family food and eating practices - Wills, W., Backett-Milburn, K., Roberts, M. -., & Lawton, J. (2011). This is part of the literature of the course Lifestyle and Consumption (CHL20806) at Wageningen university.
Wills, W., Backett-Milburn, K., Roberts, M. -., & Lawton, J. (2011). The framing of social class distinctions through family food and
eating practices. Sociological Review, 59, 725-740. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wur.nl/10.1111%2Fj.1467- 954X.2011.02035.x
The framing of social class distinctions through family food and eating practices
N.B. For a full description of the methodology, analysis and results of this study, see the original article
Eating, and all aspects involved, is a socially constructed practice. Sociologists look at how food
and eating practices help to create social order and boundaries within families. This also
involves conflicts and tension. For example, when children refuse to eat a certain meal, which is
their way of showing autonomy. They also look at the role of women, ‘food work’, and the role of
men, providing the means to consume food. However, not only family, but also the social
influences outside the family influence eating practices.
The aim of this study is to draw two qualitative studies which examine the part that social class
played in (re)constructing and (re)producing everyday food and eating practices in families
with young teenagers. Of interest is the emotional response to class, the way class is lived,
experienced and ‘felt’. The approach of the authors has enabled them to use food and eating as a
lens onto the broader, class-based contexts of family life, whilst also helping them to understand
and explain the very different food and eating practices displayed by the parents and young
teenagers in their studies. These data help to illustrate aspects of the habitus and classed
distinctions of taste.
Class-based distinctions
Social class can be defined by the structural, economic, or cultural components which lead to the
unequal or unnatural divisions and dispositions that exist within society. This study tries to
understand middle class and working class food and eating practices by looking at Bourdieu’s
concept of habitus. Class becomes embodied by habitus. Habitus provides a way of classifying
practices behind the conditions of lifestyle. It is an unconscious set of beliefs, attitudes and
behaviors, imprinted by cultural and social context. It places people within a certain social
group. Bourdieu argues that habitus shapes everything, including changes in behavior. One can
alter their behavior. Despite this, he has been criticized for ignoring to what extent individuals
can reflect on their actions and their social position. Late modernity is seen as a time were
reflexive identity making plays quite a big role, and where social structured like class play a
smaller role than before.
Lash argues that reflexivity occurs in communities instead of individuals. He stated that shared
meanings and practices are still vital to communities, even though traditional modes of
production have become replaced by modern and postmodern information- and
communication-based structures.
Reflexivity can be interpreted in different ways. People may use it to be associated (or not) with
a particular social group. This related to the idea of Lash about winning and losing. Warde
argued that people who are afraid to make to wrong consumption choices, have the least
flexibility within a highly values and embedded system (aka losing). When this occurs the other
way around, one would be winning. In this study habitus is seen as creating the conditions for
action within everyday life.
Methodology
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