Food and the Self

Consumption, Production and Material Culture

Isabelle de Solier

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857854353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

We often hear that selves are no longer formed through producing material things at work, but by consuming them in leisure, leading to 'meaningless' modern lives. This important book reveals the cultural shift to be more complex, demonstrating how people in postindustrial societies strive to form meaningful and moral selves through both the consumption and production of material culture in leisure. Focusing on the material culture of food, the book explores these theoretical questions through an ethnography of those individuals for whom food is central to their self: 'foodies'. It examines what foodies do, and why they do it, through an in-depth study of their lived experiences. The book uncovers how food offers a means of shaping the self not as a consumer but as an amateur who engages in both the production and consumption of material culture and adopts a professional approach which reveals the new moralities of productive leisure in self-formation. The chapters examine a variety of practices, from fine dining and shopping to cooking and blogging, and include rare data on how people use media such as cookbooks, food television, and digital food media in their everyday life. This book is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the meaning of food in modern life.

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Moralities of Productive Leisure and Material Culture

The commonsense understanding of leisure is that it is the opposite of work. Within this binary distinction, work is associated with production, while leisure is associated with consumption. In the first theory of leisure, Thorstein Veblen defined it as the abstention from productive work. He suggested that pre- industrial feudal societies were separated into a wealthy “leisure class,” whose time was spent engaging in “conspicuous consumption,” and a working class, whose time was spent in manual labor (1934: 1–2). Cultural historian Steven Gelber (1999), on the other hand, argues that work and leisure were integrated in preindustrial societies, and that the real division between them came with industrialization in capitalist modernity and the separation of time into “work time” and “leisure time.” Work time was the time of production in the new industrial factories, and leisure time became the time of consumption in the new commodity cultures.

However, Gelber argues that at the very moment that work and leisure were separated under industrialism, leisure was colonized by the work ethic in the form of “productive leisure.” The new leisure time of the industrial working class was perceived as a behavioral and ideological threat by middle-class reformers, who responded by restricting access to “inappropriate” activities and encouraging the “productive use of free time” in forms of work-like leisure (1999: 2–3). Gelber focuses on the case of hobbies—in particular, craft and collecting—as forms of productive leisure, which were promoted by the guardians of public morality in the United States as a means of keeping the working class busy, inside their homes, and out of mischief. The working class was to remain productive in their spare time through making and collecting material objects. Thus productive leisure transfers the Protestant work ethic and its morality across into the sphere of leisure.

Peter Bailey (1978) traces a similar history of the morality of productive leisure in Victorian England. He focuses on the campaign for Rational Recreation, which was part of broader movements for temperance and educational reform that sought the moral and social improvement of the industrial working class. Bailey argues that the leisure time of this class “constituted a problem whose solution required the building of a new social conformity—a play discipline to complement the work discipline that was the principal means of social control in an industrial capitalist society” (1978: 5). Middle-class reformers encouraged the working class to spend their spare time more productively by learning things rather than consuming things—drinking and feasting—and provided “alternative recreations which stimulated and restored the mind rather than merely debilitated the body” (1978: 36). The working class was encouraged to participate in “improving” and educational forms of leisure, such as visiting libraries, museums, art galleries, and reading rooms, which blended “study with recreation,” and education with entertainment (1978: 48).

Just as industrialism led to significant shifts in the nature of leisure in the nineteenth century, so postindustrialism was envisaged to lead to major social changes in leisure in the twentieth century. In the 1970s, many predicted that postindustrial society would be a “leisure society”—characterized by shorter work weeks, extra vacations, and job sharing—as a result of a projected decline in the economy and the number of jobs (Jenkins and Sherman 1979). However, in the early twenty-first century—despite the global financial crisis—this leisure society has not materialized in the form predicted. Most people in postindustrial societies continue to work long hours: in 2011, Australians worked an average of 1,693 hours a year, compared with 1,625 in the United Kingdom and 1,787 in the United States (OECD 2012). Yet despite these levels of work, many people are still seeking to engage in productive and work-like forms of leisure in their spare time, as they carry over this work ethic into their leisure. It is productive leisure that has taken hold in postindustrial society rather than play.

Sociologist Robert Stebbins has conducted a significant body of ethnographic research into these work-like forms of leisure in late modernity. He theorizes them as forms of “serious leisure,” which includes amateur, hobbyist, and volunteer activities that a person finds so substantial, interesting, and fulfilling that they embark on a project of acquiring and expressing its special knowledge, skills, and experience (2007: 5, 1982). His research includes studies of amateur archeologists, astronomers, actors, musicians, and sportspeople. Stebbins distinguishes serious leisure from “casual leisure” and “project-based leisure.” Casual leisure, he argues, is a relatively short-lived pleasurable activity, which is immediately and intrinsically rewarding, and requires little or no special training, such as a stroll in the park. Project-based leisure, on the other hand, is a one-off or occasional short-term creative undertaking that is reasonably complicated, such as redecorating a bedroom, which in some cases leads to a serious leisure career in the activity (2007: 5).

While there are no accurate statistics that measure productive leisure activities, in North America, Stebbins estimates that around 20 percent of people participate in some form of serious leisure (2007: 134), while Gelber suggests that around 10 to 15 percent of adults have hobbies (1999: 31). Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller suggest the figure may be far higher in the United Kingdom, with up to 58 percent of the population participating in some form of amateur activity (2004: 29). This includes at least 4,500 independent archeologists, tens of thousands of amateur ornithologists, and 387,000 family historians (Finnegan 2005: 4). In Australia, the national Bureau of Statistics found that over 2.7 million adults were involved in hobby activities (ABS 2011a).

Where productive leisure was originally imposed on the working class by middle-class reformers as a means of moral improvement, today it is increasingly the leisure of choice among the middle class themselves (Leadbeater and Miller 2004; Campbell 2005; Stebbins 2007). This stands in contrast to C. Wright Mills’s suggestion that because of the seriousness of their work, the leisure of white-collar workers has to be unserious as a form of compensation (1956: 236). It is more likely a result, in part, of the fact that “white-collar workers more often engage in leisure that replicates attitudes and worldviews typical of their vocations” (Gelber 1999: 18). In this sense, productive leisure—in general—can be considered a form of “spillover leisure” (Wilensky 1960: 544) as it carries over the morality of the work ethic, along with workplace skills and values (although the particular forms it takes often have crucial compensatory dimensions, as I will explore). But I would argue that the rise of productive leisure as a means of working on and improving the self is also a response to processes of individualization and the compulsion to create a life of one’s own in neoliberal society, where as Nikolas Rose puts it, “the individual is to become, as it were, an entrepreneur of itself, seeking to maximize its own powers, its own happiness, its own quality of life, through enhancing its autonomy and then instrumentalizing its autonomous choices in the service of its lifestyle” (1992: 150–51). In particular, because of its work-like nature, productive leisure provides a moral approach to creating an individual self through material culture in leisure in a postindustrial world where there are few opportunities to do so in work.

AMATOR: ONE WHO LOVES

The etymological root of amateur is amator, meaning “one who loves” (Stebbins 1979: 30). Today, it also refers more specifically to someone who pursues as leisure an activity that others perform as work. Both these senses of the term are encapsulated in the self-making of foodies: they are defined by their love of a specific genre of material culture—food—as well as their professional approach to food practices during their leisure time. Amateurism is a particular kind of productive leisure, one which is not just work-like, but actually emulates professional practices. Stebbins distinguishes amateurs from hobbyists on the basis that amateur pursuits have professional counterparts, whereas hobbies do not; indeed, hobbyists often pursue activities that bear little or no resemblance to regular work roles (1992: 11, 2007: 6–8). Not only do amateurs possess professional counterparts, they are strongly influenced by them; they interact with and develop relationships with them, either in person or via media.

While they may not reproduce professional practices as directly as other forms of amateurs, such as those in sport or theater, the foodie’s pursuit of food as an amateur activity is characterized by the centrality of professional experts to their leisure and their emulation of the professional approach to this form of material culture in their self-making. Their formation of the self as an amateur is considered a moral approach to material culture—as opposed to simply being a consumer—because it is serious and work-like. Foodies do not just like eating out, but look to professional critics for guidance in the choice of restaurant, adopt the critics’ approach to analyzing the quality of the meal, and in some cases, publish their own reviews on the Internet. They do not simply enjoy cooking in their spare time; they enjoy preparing the recipes of haute cuisine chefs and go to significant effort to source their ingredients from multiple suppliers with whom they develop strong relationships. Production is central to their professional approach to material culture, as is knowledge. Like professionals, foodies are driven by the pursuit of food knowledge, and they acquire most of it from such professionals via food media. They are not just interested in learning about their own cuisine, but about all cuisines.

Foodies possess what I call a productive leisure ethic, which shapes their approach to material culture in self-formation. This is not simply a “Protestant leisure ethic,” the belief that leisure time should not be spent idly but in constructive pursuits (Clarke and Crichter 1985: 5), although this does form its broader foundation. More specifically, the productive leisure ethic refers to the higher moral value placed on producing and learning about material culture over simply consuming it in self-formation, in the context of postindustrial consumer culture and middle-class anxieties over materialism, combined with the decline of material production in work. Yet this concept also describes how the consumption of material culture itself comes to take on productive and work-like forms in leisure as a way of alleviating such anxieties.

Amateurism, as a form of productive leisure, involves high levels of commitment and the investment of large amounts of time and energy. For foodies, this is invested in a particular form of material culture. Just as professionals have a career in food, so do amateurs—what Stebbins (2007: 5) calls a “leisure career,” which similarly involves the acquisition and expression of knowledge, skills, and experience over a long span of time. The foodies in my ethnography were all, by and large, what Stebbins would call “pure amateurs” (1979: 36), people who have never seriously held or pursued professional aspirations—as opposed to “pre-professionals,” who seek a professional career in food, like many of the contestants on MasterChef. While some of my informants expressed a desire to shape the self as a food professional, this desire functioned more as an occupational daydream than as a serious plan. These daydreams covered a variety of occupations, from being a chef (Beth), food critic (Mathew), or restaurateur (Sam), to being a butcher (George), baker (Ruth), or food historian (Jeff). However, the large majority had not made any serious attempt at pursuing professions related to their food interests, as they already had established occupations in other fields. Most were happy to keep these practices as leisure, not work. Becoming a chef, the most common occupational fantasy, was often offset by the recognition of the difficult nature of chefs’ work, including long hours and stressful environments, an unromanticized view of those who continue to make the self through material production in work. Yet it may also have been a result of the lower status of this job as a skilled trade, rather than a middle-class profession. Nevertheless, there was a pervasive fear that pursuing their interest in a professional manner would make it “too serious” and take the pleasure out of it. For example, Nick was a marketing analyst in his twenties, who had recently returned to study to undertake his master’s degree. After discovering a passion for cooking since completing his undergraduate degree, he had considered changing careers, but ultimately decided that “I enjoy cooking too much to want to ruin that by making it a profession.” Rosa, who was in her early thirties, had made the most serious attempt to pursue a career as a chef, undertaking several months of an apprenticeship the previous year, before returning to a career in the public service. As she put it, “I decided that I wanted to keep my obsession as my passion and not my profession.” Thus, being a foodie is about developing a moral approach to material culture in self-formation through work-like leisure, rather than work.

For foodies, the material culture of food constitutes what Robert Dubin calls a “central life interest” (CLI). He argues that “a committed gardener, stamp collector, opera buff, jet setter, cook… are all usually devoted to their activity as a central life interest. Give such individuals a chance to talk freely about themselves and they will quickly reveal their CLI through fixation on the subject and obvious emotional fervor with which they talk about it” (1992: 42). This was evident in my encounters with foodies. When I met Sam, a social worker in his early fifties, he described how he had a central life interest in food, saying “my interest, my passion, my obsession in the world—it’s not sport, it’s not gardening, it’s about food and all of the things that are associated with it.” He described how this drove him to read cookbooks in bed, take sourdough “mother” (starter dough) on holidays, take responsibility for the cooking in his home, and “hunt for that obscure ingredient which will make a difference to a dish.” He said, “I suspect my thirst for food knowledge drives my wife mad in view of the hundreds of cookbooks and recipe cuttings I have accumulated in our spare room over many years.” As she had recently said to him, “You’re just wired for food, you’re wired for food.” The intense commitment to an amateur pursuit as a central life interest—whether focused on a form of material culture or otherwise—leads to what Stebbins calls its potential “uncontrollability,” where it is so attractive that it threatens to take up more and more of the participant’s time and energy (2007: 69–70). Other people, such as partners, friends, or strangers, sometimes find it difficult to understand the commitment amateurs display toward their chosen pursuits. As Sam said when describing his “obsession,” “I know I’m starting to sound like a madman.” In his ethnographic research, Gary Alan Fine similarly found that amateur mushroomers, who also shaped their selves through the material culture of food, felt they would potentially be perceived by others as mad. He refers to this as “Fine’s Law of Shared Madness,” whereby “groups often present to observers and one another the knowing claim that they are ‘crazy,’ ‘mad,’ or ‘addicted,’” as a form of defense (1998: 208).

So why do people spend such time and energy engaging in work-like forms of leisure with material culture, particularly when they work such long hours in their paid jobs? While it may appear “mad” to others, most of my informants felt that their serious commitment to food—as productive leisure—played a central role not just in forming a moral self through material culture, but also in contributing to their sense of personal wellbeing and happiness. Many described being a foodie as “extremely important” to them—not for purposes of social distinction or cache, but for their overall physical and psychological wellbeing. Their food-related productive leisure, I argue, can be considered a form of what Foucault (1986) calls “the care of the self.” This involves taking care of, and cultivating, one’s soul. As Foucault observes, the goal of the care of the self is to “live most happily” (1986: 45). The positive emotional states linked to the foodie’s love of food help to achieve this goal. As Theresa, who was an account manager in her thirties, put it, “being a foodie is part of my life, my personality and my wellbeing. It would be a sadder, greyer existence if I wasn’t a foodie.” Another informant, John, was in his fifties and worked in property development. He described how he had decided to pursue an interest in food as a form of care of the self at a very difficult and sad point in his life:

When the marriage ended, which was just over a decade ago, I made a conscious decision that I was going to have some fun with food… So it became a hobby really. It was something I could do, you know. I found life hard sometimes being on my own, but it was something I could do, close the world out, and I could do, and feel good about it.

The care of the self, as Foucault observes, involves “doing things”; it involves “the work of oneself on oneself” (1986: 51):

It takes time… This time is not empty; it is filled with exercises, practical tasks, various activities. Taking care of oneself is not a rest cure. There is the care of the body to consider, health regimens, physical exercises without overexertion, the carefully measured satisfaction of needs. There are the meditations, the readings, the notes that one takes on books or on the conversations one has heard, notes that one reads again later, the recollection of truths that one knows already but that need to be more fully adapted to one’s own life. (1986: 50–51)

The various activities that foodies participate in based around the material culture of food, such as cooking, sourcing produce, eating, reading, note-taking, and thinking about food, all contribute to this care of the self. The pursuit of knowledge is central to this regime. As Foucault argues, “educating oneself and taking care of oneself are interconnected activities” (1986: 55). This is highlighted in the words of Amelia, who was in her early twenties and worked in communications. She said, “I think I know heaps. But I don’t go on and on about it, so my friends wouldn’t necessarily know how much I knew—or care. I just like knowing about restaurants, chefs, recipes, ingredients etcetera for myself.” This is considered a moral approach to material knowledge in self-formation. Likewise, Anne stressed how this education was important just for herself, as she said: “I seem to retain the most trivial information if it’s food-related, like all the names of unusual vegetables, or chefs’ names… It is important to me but I think to a lot of people, it’s not.” The acquisition of a material education, then, is seen as central to the care of the self. While Foucault examines the care of the self in the early Roman Empire, the incitement that one must “take care of the self” assumes particular force today within the privatized Do-It-Yourself philosophy of neoliberal governance, in which the car...