Food as ritual, routine or convention

Abstract

This paper looks at the importance of understanding situations and context in food consumption focusing on the rituals, habits and conventions of eating meals. It argues that meals provide a link to the wider community reflecting the shared understanding that underpins much of our routine food consumption. In looking at meals, as objects and events, it argues that they offer continuity with the past and reflect cultural ideas about eating “properly”. Drawing on research among recently married or co‐habiting young Scottish couples it shows the importance attached to eating evening meals together and a strong adherence to tradition while accommodating more variety and scope for individual preferences in different parts of the meal system. It concludes that meal rituals and routines are likely to remain an important part of eating despite claims about the individualisation of this consumption practice.

Keywords:

• Consumption
• Eating Rituals
• Food Conventions
• British Meals

Acknowledgements

My thanks to John Desmond for helpful comments on the paper and to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive suggestions on the paper.

Notes

The rules and prohibitions of eating are usually centred on the spectacular, for example the sumptuous feasts of King Solomon, or the banquets at the Palace of Versailles from the reign of Louis XIV to Charles X, or the ostentatious displays of conspicuous consumption in Veblen's leisure class at the end of the end of the nineteenth century (Symons 2000, 268–69)

Most of us eat everyday, several times a day, and those who are less fortune are consumed by the idea of consuming food. It is essential to our survival and well‐being yet in abundance we take it for granted and regard it as somewhat mundane, ordinary, even boring. Try to remember what you had for lunch a couple of days ago, assuming you had lunch, or what you ate for dinner last Saturday? Can you remember what you bought on your last food‐shopping trip? Most of us find it hard to recall what we ate, or bought, unless the occasion was exceptional in terms of the food, the company, and/or the location. Food is the stuff of sensory and short‐term memory, the hedonism brief, and the pleasure momentary. With satiety comes temporary respite that allows us to forget the foraging and get on with what we were doing.

One might argue that in many developed societies much of what we eat is superfluous to our nutritional requirements and over consumption is manifest in new sorts of problems such as obesity.

Desmond traces the rise of consumer society and the increasing significance in the individual. He sees modern consumers as “narcissists to the extent that consumption is regarded as a frivolous individual activity opposed to the solidarity which is regarded through “honest” work. In addition, the typical consumer is thought of as an individual who achieves a form of identity through consumption” (Desmond 2002, 3).

Although, as McCorkindale (1992) notes, an explanation of taste based on what we are used to tells us little about the determinants of taste.

Not only does this serve as a means of inclusion but it excludes outsiders from participating in the group activities (Douglas 1972)

Arnould and Price describe this as a collective display aimed at inventing or recreating cultural traditions.

While their interviewees could recognise meals, they found the definition of a meal problematic.

This position does not deny the individualisation process but questions the strength of that process more generally and the extent to which it is evident across the meal system.