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ABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the amalgamation of media use practices and cooking practices can be studied and to what extent a ‘laboratory set-up’ can inform us about mundane practices. Empirically, the article draws on interventions implemented in 6th- and 7th-grade home economics classes in three Danish schools. The children cooked, recorded their cooking using iPads and created food videos for YouTube. The article contributes to the ongoing methodological discussion regarding how to study media use in a highly medialised society. The theoretical point of departure is non-media-centric media studies and practice theory. The conclusions suggest that adopting a practice approach in performing this kind of empirical research can be fruitful in facilitating tacit knowledge, practical sense, and routinised procedures across media use practices and non-media-related practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The group consists of four researchers from three different research traditions within the humanities: two scholars from media studies, one anthropologist, and one cultural studies scholar, all participating in an externally funded research project, Taste for Life (Nordea Foundation 2014–2018). This large, collaborative project focuses on taste education and competencies among children and young people in schools, at festivals and special events, etc. (www.smagforlivet.dk).
2. In regard to ethical concerns, we got consent from both headmasters of the schools, the teachers, and all parents prior to the interventions. Also, it is important to keep in mind that our interest was the practices and negotiations in the groups, not the individual child. So, we did not gather life-stories of the individual children and we do not use the real names of the children, teachers, or schools.
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Notes on contributors
Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager
Dr. Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University. She has published on children, food, gender, and methodologies in e.g. Critical Food Studies, Trends in Food Science & Technology and Nordicom Review, also, she is Editor in Chief at the Nordic Journal, MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research.
Jonatan Leer
Dr. Jonatan Leer is head of food and tourism research at University College Absalon, Roskilde. He has published widely on food culture, notably on the new Nordic cuisine and the gendering of food practices, in journals such as Food, Culture and Society, Food and Foodways, European Journal of Cultural Studies and Feminist Review. Jonatan has written three books and edited the book Food and Media (Routledge 2016) and contributed to Food and Age in Europe (Routledge 2019), Alternative Food Politics (Routledge 2018), Food and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury 2017) and Food, Masculinities, Home (Bloomsbury 2017). Jonatan is visiting lecturer at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, and member of the Danish gastronomic academy.
Karen Klitgaard Povlsen
Dr. Karen Klitgaard Povlsen is Senior Lecturer and Emerita Associate Professor in Media Studies at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University in Denmark. Her research interest has for decades been popular media contents and people’s everyday uses of cross-media content, not least food. She has published on food in magazines, fiction series, gender, and body ideals, media practices on digital platforms, trust and credibility organic labeling of food. Selected publications: ‘Food in a Life time Span’ in Food and old Age, Routledge 2019; Food as performance: From Stilleben to Photography, in Eat Me, Trapholt 2017; Foodand Media, co-edited with Dr. Jonatan Leer, Routledge 2016. Forthcoming is a chapter on ‘Food and Media as Material Culture’, in Material Culture Studies, ed. I Michalache, Bloomsbury Academic 2020 and ‘New Nordic Childhoods: Methodological Challenges in the case of Food and Media’. Bloomsbury Academic 2020.
Susanne Højlund
Dr. Susanne Højlund is associate professor of anthropology at Aarhus University, and head of the interdisciplinary centre Food Culture Studies (FOCUS). She has done fieldwork in Denmark and Cuba within childhood, welfare and food studies. She is part of the Centre Taste for Life, and has published several works on taste. She is working with experimental and visual anthropology, and has experience as a filmmaker.