Hospitality within hospital meals—Socio-material assemblages

ABSTRACT

Hospital meals and their role in nutritional care have been studied primarily from a life and natural science perspective. This article takes a different approach and explores the idea of hospitality inspired by Jacques Derrida’s work on the ontology of hospitality. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish hospital, hospitality practices were studied using a socio-material assemblage approach. The study showed that rethinking the meal event could change the wards into temporary “pop-up-restaurants,” transcending the hospital context and providing a scene for shifting host–guest interactions and creating temporary meal communities. However, asymmetrical host–guest relations bound to health and efficiency rationales typical for public meal production-systems contested the hospitality space. Findings indicate that hospitality thinking can be a valuable guiding principle to enable staff and management involved in hospital food service and in nutritional care to work more systematically with the environment for improved hospital meal experiences in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitality
• hospital meals
• meal practices
• socio-material assemblage

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Holbaek Hospital, Koncern Service Køkken, staff, and patients. The authors are also grateful to Dr. Enni Mertanen, principal lecturer, JAMK University of Applied Sciences for comments. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding

The article was based upon a PhD study funded by the Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Additional information

Funding

The article was based upon a PhD study funded by the Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark.