CULTURAL POLITICS OF FOOD AND EATING

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating

This paper presents a comparison of four chapters of the book called The Cultural Politics of Eating, Part Two: Gentrification, Yuppification, and Domesticatin Tastes.

The main idea of Chapter 7 revolves around the fact that Eating practices encompass the context and atmosphere of a meal: the total experience of what and where we eat, how we begin each meal, what we eat with, and with whom we eat. Thus, these practices involve a package of culturally, socially, and historically contextualised experiences. The sociological study of food and eating contributes to a fuller picture of this context-specific experience. Gillette (1995) argues that contexts can change the meanings of eating. Studying children's diet practices in China, he observes that the highly centralised, rigidly standardised operation of McDonald's is viewed by younger generations as the organisational embodiment of democracy, individualism, and free enterprise (p. 209), a message they embrace to reject the stuffiness and rigidity of French tradition. Fantasia considers “the emergence of the fast food experience in China to be culturally and socially decontextualised” (p109). Different meanings emerge in different contexts.

The more industrialised and complex the food processing chain, the more difficult it is to know what the food contains. Publicity has increased awareness of food-related health risks and fueled suspicion toward intensely processed fast foods.

Among the contested ethnical issues regarding corporate fast food are labor issues, franchiser rights, and marketing for children. Also controversial are the use of chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, fungicides, and pesticides in the mass-production of beef, poultry, and vegetables, and the treatment of production animals, ranchers, and land. Plenty of energy is required in packaging production and disposal, as well as mass production, transportation, and preparation practices. The resulting heaps ...