Abstract
Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters between Foods and Bodies, edited by Emma-Jayne Abbots and Anna Lavis, adds much to the growing body of sociology literature on consumption practices. This multidisciplinary work features 13 essays divided into four parts: Part I: ‘Absences and Presences: How We (Do Not) Eat What (We Think) We Eat’; Part II: ‘Intimacies, Estrangements and Ambivalences: How Eating Comforts and Disquiets’; Part III: ‘Contradictions and Coexistences: What We Should and Should Not Eat’; and Part IV: ‘Entanglements and Mobilizations: The Multiple Sites of Eating Encounters.’
Part I of the book focuses on the hidden social dimensions of the contemporary food landscape. The first essay, ‘Invisible foodscapes: Into the blue’ by Kaori O’Conner, examines marine and coastal places that are oftentimes ignored or not seen. Yet these places are consumed more often than most realize through the use of seaweed in food. It is argued that this is problematic as we focus on preserving the ‘green’ issues of our planet, often at the expense of the ‘blue.’ The second essay, ‘The substance of absence: Exploring eating and anorexia’ by Anna Lavis, is a study of the multifaceted meanings that anorexic individuals give food and not eating. This work looks to include the often ignored dimension of anorexia: ‘why anorexia matters to informants’ (p. 49). The third and final essay of the first part is ‘Home and heart, hand and eye: Unseen links between pigmen and pigs in industrial farming’ by Kim Baker. Usually an ignored and low-status part of the food process, pigmen here are given the focus as an integral part of delivering pork products to people. They are portrayed as having a dialectical relationship with their pigs as both future food products and animals that they care for on a daily basis.
Part II of the book shifts the focus of eating to the ways it influences the self. First, ‘Advancing critical dietics: Theorizing health at every size’ by Lucy Aphramor, Jennifer Brady, and Jacqui Gingras, attempts to deal with the ‘universalizing and reductionist perspective to health’ that the UK has in regard to fatness and thinness (p. 85). This essay brings power into the equation of dietics and health discourse. The next essay, ‘Eating and drinking Kefraya: The Karam in the vineyards’ by Elizabeth Saleh, shows how food can bring people together. Common memory is intertwined with olive groves, fig tree orchards, and vineyards for the Lebanese families studied in this chapter. However, as the author notes, these relationships have become more problematic in some ways as the wine industry has begun to use the area as a hub. The last essay in this section, ‘Negotiating foreign bodies: Migration, trust and the risky business of eating in Highland Ecuador’ by Emma-Jane Abbots, examines privileged migrants to the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca. These migrants seek to escape industrial food chains, yet they still obtain the majority of their food in clean and safe supermarkets. Thus, these migrants seek distinction through new local social boundaries built on this dual food relationship.
The third part of the book looks at the framing of values related to what should and should not be eaten. The first essay, ‘Chewing on choice’ by Sally Brooks et al., examines the history of food choice and its contemporary implications for British and international food development. Choice, it is argued, is the justification for many policy decisions related to health and food in the neoliberal age. This often happens at the expense of understanding socioeconomic contexts and power inequalities. Next, ‘It is the bacillus that makes our milk’: Ethnocentric perceptions of yogurt in postsocialist Bulgaria’ by Maria Yotova is an exploration of Bulgarian yogurt production as a case of ‘the ways in which global processes and industrialization create a mirror through which nationalism is reflected and created’ (p. 170). In this case, Bulgaria has seized on the idea of yogurt as a ‘natural’ local food that other nations have adopted. Thus, it has become an important nationalistic ideal. The last essay in this section is ‘The transition to low carbon milk: Dairy consumption and the changing politics of human–animal relations’ by Jim Ormond, which is an examination of the changing nature of human–animal relations as affected by the idea of lowering one’s carbon footprint. It has led to new ways of breeding, caring for, and maintaining dairy herds.
The fourth and final part of the book is focused on social boundaries and geographies in contemporary foodscapes. First, ‘Confessions of a vegan anthropologist: Exploring the trans-biopolitics of eating in the field’ by Samantha Hurn is an exploratory essay on the differences that arise between anthropological field workers and their subjects due to ‘culture shock’ related to food and eating. In this work, the personal experience of the vegan anthropologist is put into play. While studying rural farm communities, she refuses to eat the meat her subjects consumed. This leads to an interesting, though problematic, relationship with her informants, vis-a-vis removal from the cultural boundaries of the study. The second essay in this section is ‘Metabolism as strategy: Agency, evolution and biological hinterlands’ by Rachael Kendrick. This chapter focuses on reframing metabolism as a material and cultural concept. In particular, the author is interested in the relationship between environment and individual metabolism. She is interested in avoiding the ‘crude economic rubric of “calories in, calories out” ’ most use in defining metabolic problems such as obesity (p. 237). The third essay is ‘Ingesting places: Embodies geographies of coffee’ by Benjamin Coles. This chapter offers a study of how one consumes place through the consumption of coffee. This occurs because the geographic meaning of a place is used for branding specific coffees, as the flavors come to be associated with the symbol of that place. The book concludes with ‘Complex carbohydrates: On the relevance of ethnography in nutrition education’ by Emily Yates-Doerr. This final essay looks at the conflicting ideals of bread consumption in Guatemala. With a public worry over obesity, doctors have pushed patients to consume wholewheat breads. However, this is harder to find and less traditional than sweet white breads in the Catholic nation. Thus, everyday life choices of bread consumption become conflicting and less straightforward than the seemingly scientifically neutral medical doctors’ view of eating.
Taken together, these essays offer a fascinating interdisciplinary approach to consumption. By approaching eating with dietic and biological viewpoints, as well as the traditional sociocultural theories, the book offers a rich and multifaceted view of the modern foodscape. It is impressive how many viewpoints come together in this volume to form a cohesive read. And because of the multidisciplinary approach, there is a little something for anyone interested in the social aspects of consumption here.
Perhaps one theme that should have been more prominent is the place of power and inequality in consumption spaces. A few of the chapters touch on economic or cultural inequalities, but typically are not the focus. Cultural capital and capitalist commodity chains are briefly touched on, but do not get the attention some may feel they deserve in a work such as this. However, the book does an exemplary job of showing how identity is created, performed, and framed through consumption (or the lack thereof) of foods. I highly recommend this book for researchers of consumption and culture who wish to integrate more disciplines into their understanding of eating in the contemporary world.