Taking humor seriously in contemporary food research

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights the social significance of humor in everyday interactions with food within families and related household contexts. The paper approaches humor in relational terms, emphasizing its role in negotiating the way power is exercised within the moralized context of “feeding the family.” Having reviewed previous work on the social significance of humor, the paper provides some examples of food-related humor from recent research with British food consumers, illustrating what such occasions reveal about participants’ relations with each other, with us as researchers, and with the food they consume. Specifically, participants were found to use apologetic and self-deprecating humor to negotiate the moral ambiguities of food and to cover potentially embarrassing situations; to express familiarity and disgust regarding their current consumption practices; and to excuse potentially shameful behavior or guilty pleasures. The paper argues that an understanding of the “background disposition” through which consumers make sense of their multiple encounters with food is critical to the analysis of food-related humor and that ethnographic methods are particularly adept at revealing the social context in which humor occurs.

KEYWORDS:

• Food consumption
• humor
• background disposition
• moralization

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank their participants for engaging with the research; the funding bodies (ERA-Net SUSFOOD and ESRC) for their financial support; two anonymous referees for their constructive criticism; and audiences in Edinburgh (Scotland) and Halle (Germany) for their comments and suggestions. They are particularly grateful to David Evans, who made detailed comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For a similar argument about “laughter beyond humor,” see Emmerson (2017), who argues that laughter has affective dimensions that are separate from the humorous moments that precede it.

2. Space precludes a longer discussion of the voluminous literature on the social significance of humor. For further reading on the three theoretical positions outlined above, see Morreall (2016).

3. Mary Douglas makes a similar point about the way humor marks a temporary suspension of the social structure, “[b]ut the strength of its attack is entirely restricted by the consensus on which it depends for recognition” (1968, 372).

4. Ebenezer Obadare has shown how ridicule is used in Nigerian civil society as a tool for subordinate classes to deride the state, expressing vengeance, serving as a coping mechanism or means of escape, and/or as an act of subversion or resistance (2009, 243–4). Obadare identifies the “central motif” of such humor (akin to Macpherson’s “background disposition”) as popular frustration and cynicism over “the system” of politics and governance in Nigeria (ibid., 255).

5. The first project was funded by the ERA-Net SUSFOOD program, the second by the ESRC. Both projects included comparative data (from Denmark, Germany, and Sweden in the first case and from Portugal in the second). The examples in this paper are confined to the UK data.

6. Utilized in the freshness study, these “tasting events” aimed to capture participants’ sensory engagements with food during shared meal experiences.

7. Angela Meah undertook the fieldwork, prepared the data for analysis, and identified potentially relevant examples. She also participated fully in the analysis and interpretation of the data, drawing on her in-depth knowledge of the participants and their household circumstances through her experience of “being there.” Peter Jackson led the funding bids, was PI on both projects, and wrote the first draft of this paper.

8. Both projects received ethical approval from the University of Sheffield.

9. Compare Warde’s structural opposition between convenience and care (Warde 1997) and our critical elaboration of his work (Meah and Jackson 2017).

10. The phrase “Here’s one I prepared earlier” will be familiar to British readers as a reference to the long-running children’s TV show Blue Peter.

11. See the Kitchen Life study (Wills et al. 2013) for numerous other examples.

12. See Elspeth Probyn’s discussion of how expressions of disgust build boundaries of social inclusion and exclusion (Probyn 2000). More generally, on the “anatomy of disgust,” see Miller (1997) and on visceral methods, see Hayes-Conroy and Hayes Conroy (2008) and Longhurst, Johnston, and Ho (2009).

13. While some important ethical issues are raised in recording participants while they are drunk, Tony gave his consent to use this material after our research with him was complete. He was fully aware of what he had recorded and how it would be used in our research. He has also read an earlier draft of this paper.

14. Even the briefest utterances can have social and cultural significance as Wiggins’ (2002) work on gustatory mmms clearly demonstrates. Such sounds can be appreciative or questioning, expressing agreement or dissent.

15. For a critical discussion of the idea of “food as lens,” see Murcott (2013, 20).

16. See also Janet Finch’s work on “displaying families” (Finch 2007) and related work on the sensory potential of participant-produced video (Muir and Mason 2012).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ERA-Net SUSFOOD program (grant number FP7-291766) and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/N009649/1).

Notes on contributors

Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield, UK. His research focuses on food and consumer culture. He directed the “Changing Families, Changing Food” research program, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2005–2008) and a project on consumer anxieties about food, funded by the European Research Council (2009–2013). He recently completed a project on “Food, Convenience and Sustainability,” funded by the ERA-Net SUSFOOD program (2014–2017) and is currently working on a project on the enactment of freshness in the UK and Portuguese agri-food sectors, funded by the ESRC. His recent books include Anxious Appetites (2015) and Reframing Convenience Food (co-authored 2018).

Angela Meah

Angela Meah is a Research Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield, UK. After gaining her PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester in 2001, she has worked on a number of research projects funded by the European Research Council, the ESRC, and the Food Standards Agency. Her work uses a range of qualitative approaches including life-history interviews, focus groups, video, and photographic methods. She is co-author of Reframing Convenience Food (2018) and has published papers in Appetite, Food, Culture & Society, Gastronomica, Sociological Review, Critical Public Health, and numerous other journals.