Gender, Class and Food

Families, Bodies and Health

Julie M. Parsons

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137476401
• eBook ISBN: 9781137476418
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Everyday foodways are a powerful means of drawing boundaries between social groups and defining who we are and where we belong. This book draws upon auto/biographical food narratives and emphasises the power of everyday foodways in maintaining and reinforcing social divisions along the lines of gender and class.

1

Introduction

In a twenty first century neo-liberal era, everyday foodways are a powerful means of drawing boundaries between social groups, distinguishing the ‘self’ from the ‘other’, defining who we are and where we belong. Throughout this book I draw upon data and analysis of 75 auto/biographical food narratives that formed the basis of my doctoral study: ‘[email protected]; an auto/biographical study of relationships with food’. My research leads me to argue that everyday foodways enable individuals to present themselves as responsible neo-liberal citizens, so that eating healthily for example demonstrates an engagement with public and medical discourses that positions the self as responsible for her or his own health and well-being (responsible individualism). In this book, I emphasise the power of everyday foodways in maintaining and reinforcing social divisions along the lines of gender and class. Indeed, everyday foodways have become a potent means of ‘doing gender’ (West and Zimmerman 1987) and performing a middle class habitus (Bourdieu 1984).

Throughout, I use the term foodways. This usually refers to the production and distribution of food at a macro level; it is also used in anthropology when exploring food cultures or shared common beliefs, behaviours and practices relating to the production and consumption of food (Counihan 1999). Here I also consider foodways at a micro level, to reflect the multiplicity of ways of ‘doing’ food that incorporates all aspects of everyday food practices, from acquiring food, growing it, or shopping for it, preparing, cooking, sharing and eating (in/outside the domestic sphere), to the consumption of food media. This incorporates the notion of foodways as an essential aspect of an individual’s cultural habitus (Bourdieu 1984), which is cultivated and inculcated over time. Indeed, foodways are narratives of relational affectation, or how we learn to know food, with our food preferences embedded, produced and maintained through the practice of doing ‘tastes’, over and over again (Carolan 2011: 6). Thus, foodways are ‘affective practices’ (Wetherell 2012: 96), because they are ongoing emotional, socially constructed, embodied, situated performances infused with sedimented social and personal history. This sedimentation is like lime scale fixing itself to the inside a kettle, it becomes part of the material body of the kettle, naturalised.

Further, ‘foodways’ has multiple meanings; it highlights the significance of modes of practice or ways of ‘doing’ food, as well as movement and direction across time (history) and space (culture). Consequently, foodways connect the individual with the social through everyday practices (action/habit). The significance of foodways or ways of doing food is reminiscent of West and Zimmerman’s (1987) notion of ‘doing’ gender, Butler’s (1999) conceptualisation of gender as performance, and Morgan’s (1996) theories on ‘family practices’ as significant in distinguishing between what families ‘are’ and what families ‘do’, in contrast to the institution of ‘the’ family (Morgan 2011). A focus on foodways therefore emphasises the embodied, affective, everyday food performances; interactions and temporal ways of doing food that connect past, present and future.

It is notable therefore that foodways (like gender and class) work within three interconnecting domains: (1) on an ‘individual’ level, through socialisation, internalisation, identity work and the construction of the self; (2) through interactional ‘cultural’ expectations and ‘othering’ of practices; and (3) via ‘institutions’ that control access to resources, as well as ideologies and discourses (Risman 2004). Thus, performances of everyday foodways are validated, constrained and facilitated by reference to wider institutional contexts that may include gender (patriarchy), class (economics), culture (capital) and ‘the’ family (discourse). Accordingly, everyday foodways inculcate a cultural habitus (Bourdieu 1984) through the repetition, reproduction and reinforcement of values and tastes. Hence, in an era of heightened anxiety about obesity, everyday foodways continue to be morally loaded activities that have the power to consolidate cultural boundaries. Similarly, public health discourses reinforce divisions between appropriate and inappropriate foodways, with ‘healthy’ everyday foodways associated with ‘good’ food and therefore being good.

Gender and class

A focus on gender and class raises obvious questions about why and how these forms of stratification still matter. Indeed, the impact of class and gender on foodways seems to belong to a former era and have more in common with research carried out across the UK in the early 1980s (Murcott 1982, 1983, Charles and Kerr 1988). In these studies gender roles within the home were clearly demarcated and economic social class directly related to household expenditure on food. Today gender and class positions are considered fluid and less easy to discern. Instead, there are cultural codes and symbols that individual consumers choose to buy into, such as ‘healthy’ eating or ‘authentic’ cuisine and these give the impression that we are free from patriarchal constraints and economic determinism. Of course this belies the reality for many, especially in terms of everyday foodways, that what we eat, with whom, how, where and when, are heavily influenced by cultural values inculcated within the family over time, and although this does not seem to relate directly to patriarchy (Walby 1990) or economic capital (Bourdieu 1984), ‘time’ is money, with those in control of it still mostly male.

When discussing gender throughout this book I will be referring to performances of femininities and masculinities (Butler 1999), or ‘doing gender’ (West and Zimmerman 1987). Although I identify as a feminist scholar, I will not be providing analysis of the range of possible feminist perspectives, as these are well rehearsed elsewhere (Cairns and Johnston, in press). Suffice to note that I agree with the Fawcett Society’s (2010) mission statement in supporting ‘a vision of society in which women and men enjoy equality at work, at home and in public life’. For me, being, doing or becoming a feminist is a political act. It signifies an alignment with egalitarian values. In the context of gender identities, everyday foodways are routinised repetitions, performances and affective practices that give the impression of a stable self; these become part of the ‘performativity’ of hetero-normative gender practices ‘that creates the illusion of an inner essence or psychic gender core’ (Butler 1999: 28). However, whilst gender is socially, culturally and discursively produced, it is also experienced through the division of labour at work and in the home.

Indeed, everyday foodways are a powerful means of reproducing and reinforcing difference (individually and culturally), and the lived experience of ‘doing gender’ cuts across individual, cultural and structural domains, especially in relation to the micro-politics of gender; as Whitehead (2002: 14) notes, ‘to be gendered is to be political’. It is also relational, for example men resort to hegemonic masculinities to distance themselves from emphasised femininities (Connell 1995:183). There is no single form of masculinity or femininity, instead men and women position themselves in terms of gender relations, ‘so that to be a man is to be not like a woman [and] to be a woman is to be not like a man’ (Bradley 2007:48). This has obvious implications when considering foodways over the life course.

In terms of social class I utilise Bradley’s (2014: 434) class schema that builds upon a Marxo-Weberian tradition that includes three or possibly four classes, the elite, the middle class, the working class and the labour surplus class or most disadvantaged fraction of the working class. Further, Bradley (1996: 19) notes:

Class is a social category, which refers to lived relations surrounding social arrangements of production, exchange, distribution and consumption. While these may narrowly be conceived as economic relationships, to do with money, wealth and property … class should be seen as referring to a much broader web of social relationships including, for example, lifestyle, educational experience and patterns of residence.

Thus, like gender, social class is relational and following Bourdieu’s (1984) model of cultural capital and the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) ‘class operate[s] symbolically and culturally through forms of stigmatisation and marking of personhood and value’ (Savage et al. 2013: 222). In addition, cultural hostility or ‘aversion to different lifestyles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes’ (Bourdieu 1984: 56). This centres on a contested relationship with the legitimate or high cultural capital of the dominant classes and assumes a level of cultural hostility (strong dislike) towards the illegitimate or low/‘vulgar’ cultural forms of capital associated with the working class (and vice versa) (Bourdieu 1984, Warde 2011). Hence, in analysing contemporary foodways, it is pertinent to utilise Bourdieu’s (1984, 1996) forms of capital: economic capital (wealth and income), cultural capital (embodied, objectified, institutionalised), social capital (networks and relationships) and symbolic capital (the conversion and legitimisation of other forms of capital), as these are important resources in the boundary work and demarcation of moral hierarchies when considering what counts as legitimate/illegitimate taste (Bourdieu 1996).

Further, the manner of presenting, serving and eating food, or everyday foodways fulfils the social function of legitimising social difference (Bourdieu 1984: 6) and these cultural practices are gendered; as Skeggs (1997: 98) notes, ‘the sign of femininity is always classed’. Indeed, Bourdieu (1986: 105) identifies mothers as significant in transforming economic capital into symbolic and cultural capital for their children; they are what Skeggs (2004a: 22) refers to as ‘sign bearing’ carriers of taste. For example, ‘future oriented’ middle classed food ‘choices’ become part of a reshaping of patriarchy that draws on the success of ‘new’ femininities, whilst simultaneously reaffirming a ‘domesticated femininity from the past’ (Taylor 2012: 16). Thus, respondents negotiate classed as well as gendered aspirations when reflecting upon transformations and improvements in their everyday foodways over the life course. In terms of contemporary constructions of new femininities, women today have to negotiate the twin poles of traditional femininity whilst embracing neo-liberal values of the autonomous self (Budgeon 2014).

Hence, ‘doing gender to meet others expectations over time helps to construct our gendered selves’ (Risman 2004: 431). Thus, when considering the intersectionalities of gender and class, firstly, everyday foodways reinforce classed feminine and masculine identities; as Morgan (1996: 158) argues, ‘the micro-politics of food revolve around gender’ and families tend to be ‘mothered rather than gendered’ (1996: 82). Today, for example working mums preparing healthy ‘home-cooked’ meals from scratch is a means of reproducing an idealised new feminine identity (Parsons 2014a, 2014b). Secondly, these everyday foodways reinforce middle class cultural norms and values regarding what is appropriate (middle class) mothering, with responsible mothers acting as guardians of health, as well as ‘moral guardians of family eating’ (McIntosh and Zey 1989, James et al. 2009b: 8).

Indeed, when exploring everyday foodways, the intersectionalities of gender and class remain vital in maintaining and drawing boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate foodways. A commitment to particular gendered and classed foodways protects individuals from association with ‘other’ ways of doing food. It ensures an association with a kind of food hegemony that insulates individuals from the stigmatising impact of improper foodways (Johansson et al. 2013). In an obesogenic environment with high profile public health discourses and mass media campaigns around ‘proper’ foodways it is hardly surprising that the anxious middle classes want to be seen to be doing the right thing. In 2002, Ruppel-Shell argued that the ‘worried weighty’ represented the biggest marketing opportunity in history for products that could alleviate the battle with weight watching. Over a decade later, this group is still negotiating the shifting boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable foodways.

However, in contemporary westernised neo-liberal societies, being worried about weight and health-consciousness are coded as feminine. Despite arguments regarding culinary capital and the value of sustainability, health and dietary restraint amongst elite groups in the Unites States (Naccarato and LeBesco 2012), men and elite men especially are not constrained by such discourses. Indeed, elite men are able to play freely within culinary fields. Further, in a culinary field high cultural capital is also measured in terms of cultural omnivorousness or a liking for high and low cultural forms (Peterson and Kern 1996). Warde (2011: 345) argues that this omnivore debate is significant as it not only draws symbolic boundaries within the dominant class, but also has the potential to mute cultural hostility towards working class forms of capital and this is developed and explored throughout the book.

Overall I focus on how identity is articulated, formed and reformulated through the social categories of gender and class, which are played out within a theatre of everyday foodways. This is not to dismiss the significance of other major/minor categories of gender intersections, such as (in no particular order) nation, (dis)ability, sexuality, age, religion, faith and migration. Indeed intersectionality is pertinent in discussions of identity, gender and power (Davis 2008, Nash 2008, Ratna 2013) and whilst it is more often used with reference to the intersectionalities of gender and race (Puwar 2004), in considering the intersectionalities of gender and class in the field of everyday foodways, it is notable that social, cultural, economic and symbolic capitals (Bourdieu 1986), become gendered resources in boundary work and the demarcation of moral hierarchies. These forms of capital intersect with gender and enable individuals to present themselves as responsible neo-liberal citizens engaged in ‘appropriate’ middle class and gendered foodways.

Therefore I examine how and why individuals position themselves as they do, which is primarily about their need to locate themselves as ‘good’ responsible citizens and the power of hegemonic forms of everyday foodways to delineate the moral boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The persistence of Cartesian dualism (Levi-Strauss 1969) and dichotomous thinking (Oakley 1992) alongside absolutist discourses regarding appropriate foodways contributes to the cultural milieu in which individuals are forced to negotiate their subjective positions. There is a dominant gendered division of food that espouses a masculine/feminine food dichotomy within mainstream westernised foodways (Adams 1990, Nath 2011). In developed capitalist consumer societies that draw upon neo-liberal discourses of responsible individualism, the notion of consumer choice and the moral imperative to make the ‘right’ choice is paramount. Further, making the ‘right’ choice assumes an engagement with a contemporary foodscape and current discourses on what might be considered ‘appropriate’ foodways.

Hence, respondents use individual foodways as ‘narratives of becoming’ responsible neo-liberal citizens (Deleuze and Guattari 1998) and these can be positioned within wider public discourses relating to issues of family, health and the body. Indeed, these common vocabularies (Mills 1959) of transformation demonstrate the ways in which everyday foodways reify traditional forms of gender, class, family, health and the body. Despite the notion of foodways as marginal to individual identity (Warde 1997), or identity work, respondents draw on recognisable socio-historical narratives from an imagined past that valorise their engagement with contemporary individualised identities, whilst simultaneously identifying themselves as belonging to positions that continued to be influenced by ‘old’ representations of gender and class.

This book is different in its scope to similar texts on food. The most recent, Food and Femininities (Cairns and Johnston, in press), centres on interviews and focus groups with women and a few men (USA/Canada), but essentially positions individuals as consumers, interested in food shopping and consumption. In Culinary Capital (Naccarato and LeBesco 2012), the authors discuss food as a means of drawing boundaries and distinctions between elites in the USA mostly through analysis of popular American television programmes and advertising. In both there is a focus on food scenes or trends in the cultural consumption of food (real and symbolic), so that shifts in everyday foodways become an issue of consumer choice and identity formation. The authors from both books here and elsewhere (Johnston and Baumann 2010) focus on sustainability (environmentalism, ethics, localism, slow foods, farmers markets), health and dietary restraint as a means of distinguishing between consumer tribes. Following Bourdieu’s (1984) conceptualisation of cultural capital, Naccarato and LeBesco (2012: 2) argue that there is a kind of culinary capital at work, in which ‘food and food practices become markers of social status’. Cairns and Johnston (in press: 3) focus on femininity, how food is embedded in hetero-normative cultural conceptualisations of ‘how to be and act feminine’. Neither fully acknowledges the power of the intersectionalities of gender and class on everyday foodways. In this book I therefore focus on femininities and masculinities, especially how they intersect with formations of class (Skeggs 1997). I highlight the power of everyday foodways in marking what is ‘appropriate’ or legitimate in terms of gender, class, food, families, embodiment and health.

Families, bodies and health

The subtitle to this book is ‘families, bodies and health’ and this represents the concerns of those participating in the study. These themes link public issues with private troubles (Mills 1959), as public health policies locate solutions to the ‘problem of obesity’, for example, within families. These are powerful ideological domains that impact upon the construction of a responsible neo-liberal self. Hence, everyday foodways become a means of demonstrating a commitment to health, whereby eating healthily signals a healthy body (mind) and a healthy family. Conversely if individuals are not considered to be complying with cultural expectations associated with health foodways, they are prone to be ‘othered’, demonised and stigmatised. Of course this is related to power, those with high status are less likely to be stigmatised; as Bergman (2009) notes, a big male body is more likely to be associated with power than a big female one.

Indeed, the everyday f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Family Foodways
• 3 Maternal Foodways
• 4 Health Foodways
• 5 Embodied Foodways
• 6 Epicurean Foodways
• 7 Reflections
• Appendix
• References
• References