Eating in Sociological Perspective and Culture - Essay Example

10-08-2006 Eating in Sociological Perspective and Culture in Every Day Life Eating is the process of consuming something edible i.e. food for the purpose of providing nutritional needs of an animal particularly for their energy requirements. All animals must eat other organism in order to survive. Carnivores eat other animal, herbivores eat plants and omnivores eat both. Humans are basically omnivores; eat animals and plants as well. Early human beings were hunters and gatherers and collect their foods from the jungle and used fire to prepare their meals/foods prior to eat since their evolution as Homo erectus. Through the centuries, food has been recognized as one of the most important thing for survival and the history of mankind shows to a large extent, the human struggle for food. The most important objectives of the human beings were to collect food for their survival. At least 10 thousand years ago, human beings started agriculture, which has altered/changed the complete way of eating. With the advancement of the human beings socially and culturally the way of eating has changed all the way. Socialization and Culture of mankind plays a major role in change of eating practices. The way of food preparation, presentation and eating has changed with time, location and culture. Here we are concerned with eating in a social and cultural perspective in everyday life. Food is life, food what is eaten, when it is eaten and how it is eaten says a great deal about the culture. It is the center stage of every society, family and culture. In every culture eating has its unique way. Basically culture in its broader term includes all the acquired specialties of the mankind. To understand eating culture we have to understand the culture first. Culture can be defined as "The total general organized way of life including value, norms, institutions and artifacts that is passed on from generation to generation by learning alone". (Jary & Jary, 1991) Culture has been called "the way of life for the entire society". As such it includes code of manners, dress, language, eating, religion, rituals, norms of behaviour and system of belief. E.B. Tylor (1871) defined culture as "Culture of civilization taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that comply whole, which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, customs or any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of Society". Recently UNESCO(2002), defined culture as "Culture should regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of the society or a social group and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, way of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs." So, it has been quite clear from the above definitions of culture that it necessarily includes eating and it is one of the most important characteristics of every culture. Every home in almost every culture have a place devoted to the preparation of the meal and also have a specified place for eating. Most societies have restaurants and hotels to eat away from home. Eating varies from individuals to individuals in a day, their size of consumption, when and how meals are prepared and eaten varies around the World. Most individual have fairly regular daily pattern of eating occurs 2-3 meals per day. The diversity of eating could be attributed to a number of local factors, which include climate, ecology, economy, cultural traditions and industrialization. Eating always has an important role to play in almost all the social occasions and celebrations of many key cultural and religious festivals in our daily life. Without eating any function or celebration cannot be treated as complete. So eating has major role in every social and cultural aspect of our daily life. Eating is inherently area specific and cultural. Different places and different people have their different way of eating identifies their cultural identities. Eating is associated with culture, people and places. Food feeds our cultural stereotypes. It is a cultural and social marker and never devoid of meaning and significance. Fooding and eating practices denote cultural, class and moral superiority or inferiority. Eating habits are complex and often take a national and international cultural significance. Anywhere in the World when we move around people always looks after what can they eat, where they can eat and what is the special dish or cuisine, they can eat. So our inherent need for food and eating expresses itself in our daily life. Eating out throws sharp relief narrow concerns with food as merely a means of subsistence, for eating out seems to be expanding as a form of entertainment and a means to display taste, status and distinction. Eating out has both practical and symbolic significance. People eat out sometimes out of necessity, sometimes purely for pleasure. Previous research using the British family expenditure survey had suggested that modes of eating out had become a principal form in which social distinction could be expressed through food consumption. So eating out had considerable social and symbolic significance. (Warde, 2000). Eating is a major force for cultural and class issue. Human identifies himself on geographical basis and eating is an important aspect that helps them to constitute those identities. The connection between food and eating, people, places and culture exceeds far beyond the human need for nourishment and far into realms of politics, culture, class and race. Cultural perspective of eating is the one way that can help us to understand the deeply rooted nature of cultural practices in the very constitution of our communities. The 2002 World Cup soccer tournament held in both Japan and South Korea. The South Koreans wanted to hand out free hot dogs to spectators at some of the soccer matches. The only problem was that the South Koreans actually do eat dog meat. Were the hot dogs really dogs The European media certainly exercised itself over this revelation. The sense of outrage was palpable. Simply put, food is deeply associated with people and places. Food issues are complex and often take on national and international cultural significance as the South Korean example shows. (Shanahan, 2000). Eating culture differs geographically and we can broadly classify it as Eastern-Western, Asian- European, American, Mexican, Italian, Spanish, Latin American, and African. Economic development of the region also has an impact on eating. On the basis of occasions eating could be classified as ritual eating, religious eating etc. New concepts of eating in different cultures are being coming up. In our daily life we are becoming more health conscious and researches about eating habits and quality of food shapes our everyday life eating practices. We are becoming more health conscious and trying to change our daily eating habits. Due to information revolution the whole world is converging therefore results in enormous change in our eating in daily life. Everywhere we move on we can easily see the Chinese, Italian, Indian food and people are trying it. We can easily see Indian restaurants around U.K. where people, not Indians but from other nationalities are trying it. So eating is now becoming truly international. Most of the industrialized countries where time is constrained fast food; semi prepared or prepared food is easily available and people are using it in their daily life. Here one main point is to be mentioned that in those culture where family concept is breaking or becoming weak eating has changed in daily life. Due to health consciousness people are trying vegetarianism. People are trying more and more organic foods for eating in their daily life. They are becoming more inclined for nutritive value for eating. But some parts of the world is facing the problem of more eating and more calorie diet. This poses serious threat to their health. Now they are turning towards dieting, fasting which also changes our daily life eating. All human beings need food for their survival but people eating habits are the resultant of learned behaviour. These collective behaviour as well as values and attitudes they reflect come to represent a group's popular culture. Popular culture results from the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural moments that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices those pertaining to cooking, eating, clothing, mass media or other many facets often contrast with a more exclusive even elitist high culture. In every culture and society eating together is widely acknowledged. In Asian Society even now eating is one of the main rituals and have religious content. Cleanliness and piousness in eating is one of the major aspects of eastern cultures. Even each area in Asia has its own specialties and eating habits. Indian prefers curry and herbs where as Chinese and Japanese are rice based, noodles with herbs and predominantly non-vegetarian diet. Even in some culture such as India, eating together is one of the important aspects of social life and eating with equals in social stratification is the important features. Socially a hierarchy among different people has been maintained and it could be seen in their eating culture. Though due to the urbanization and adoption of western culture and practices as well as eating in restaurants and hotel, the barriers in eating together getting abolished in daily life but in rural areas the practice of eating together with equals is predominantly observed even now. In the western World such as U.K. or France have a cultural background of eating. Food comes from somewhere. Different foods are associated with different groups of people. And such cultural identities are usually place based: steak and kidney pie and the English, for example. Food is exotic, or it is bland, but it is always noteworthy. The great English beer drinker has become the lager lout made famous by so many international soccer tournaments and brought to our television screens on slow news nights. The same dipsomaniacs are also featured as the shirtless, and lobster pink, individuals that have made Spanish resorts what they are today: places inundated with British style pubs and cafeterias selling "traditional" British fried breakfasts, and offering fish and chips in the evening. (Shanahan, 2000). Eating together is a kind of glue, which helps in binding families, communities, and populations together literally or metamorphically. Eating on a dinner table may be effective and glue to familial values and culture and binding within the family members. Eating alone is unthinkable but even in the era of economic development and fast life, eating alone has come to be different cultural practices in anything but fast food outlets and sandwich bars. In increasingly individualistic society it is surprising perhaps that more new methods of socially acceptable solo dining haven't been developed. Eating alone is a separate behaviour. From eating with others the societal signals are different and now solitary eaters eat is different. The solitary dinners are either a social misfit or the victim of some tragedy. It has been widely perceived that there is an inverse relationship between quantity of eating and economic resources (the poor eat poor). Higher-class eaters are equally twice blessed with economic capital to buy healthy food and then to live a healthy life. But sometimes they had mistaken quality for quantity - to eat better is to eat more or bigger. Some parts or culture have abundance of eating but some have just to survive and this shows in their eating habits and culture. When regional boundaries are diminishing and people of different culture and areas having different ethos and practices as well as eating habits are moving around, the eating practices are changing fast. Even the food is moving out e.g. fast food to immigrant cuisines from restaurants and hotels to home delivery. Nowadays chefs are a cultural intermediary with their signature dishes, TV shows, cookbooks, their eponymous eateries is a widely talked about cultural phenomenon. People want to eat better, to be fed by someone with more invested in making a meal than the Mcjob employee flipping burglars sullenly. At present different type of eating such as healthy eating or health conscious diet with less fat and carbohydrate with rich proteins and vitamins is in the offing. People in different culture and of different social settings are more inclined to their ethnic or popular eating with or without certain modifications. People are fasting or dieting means they are inclined to conscious eating in their daily life. People in cultures, which are predominantly meat eaters moving away and vegetarianism, is the latest way of eating. Different researches and articles about eating are being published and awareness about eating is increasing day by day. In the era of information technology where everyone and every part is connected to each other influences eating a great deal in our daily life. The sociological transformation of late modern age - all that the post modernization, deterritorialization, globalization - get worked through at the level of every day, the common place, the banal. As a concentration of these processes, the buying, cooking and eating of food gives us a way into thinking through the city as a mode in disjunctive flows of contemporary culture. (Appadurai-1990). Food is abundant in being ever available and always changing. The palate need never go tired by the repetitions that marked industrial eating, the mass produce sameness spilling out of factories. This kind of abundance feeds the body but not the soul. Industrial food might once be seen as the answer to social problems but now seems only to bring new troubles. Eating is one of the most important aspects of our daily life. Our life is because of food what we eat daily. Man is a social animal therefore has different social and cultural aspects of eating. As in different society, eating in daily life differs and reflects man complete personality. It reflects our social life, community life, preferences, practices, beliefs, values, attitude, needs, identity, and relatedness in our daily life. Eating in different culture has its cultural significance. Eating has relationship with culture and identity of the people. Recently an advertising campaign by the British Tourist Authority (BTA), attempting to attract more US visitors to Britain, made the claim that curry was now the traditional dish of the British supplanting our assumed ancient reliance on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for dinner, and even threatening the cultural status of the (always healthy) "black pudding" and kidneys for breakfast. The rancor that this statement generated from the tabloid and conservative media alike, and from "traditional" British restaurant owners, put the lie to the claim that food studies are benign. The BTA, apparently, had done nothing less than attack British cultural identity and, for some injured parties, an island history of a thousand years or more. (Shanahan, 2000). Warde, Martens and olsen(1999) identify a tactic of cultural omnivorousness among particular social groups. Their argument is that the potential overload of modern consumer culture is the cause of considerable personal anxiety with so many products on the market, constructing a personal identity becomes fraught with unlimited choice. Cultural omnivorousness is thus a coping strategy based on information maximization. Taste is turned inward to define membership rather than mark distinction - we recognize - like minds through what they eat and where and gain comfort from the home coming everything we walk in through the restaurant door. Commensality confers equality among fellow tribe members, secure in our ability to recognize shared cultural codes - a safe heaven, as the antidote to the flickering confusion bombarding us when we try to make sense of others: "we are who we eat with". So it is clearly evident that eating in any society and culture is one of the far-most important practices, which identifies us. ***************************************** References: 1. Appadurai, Arjun (1999). " Disjunction and differences in the global cultural economy" in Mike Featherstone (ed.) Global culture: Nationalism, Globalisation and Modernity. London Sage, 295-310. 2.Coveney, J. (2000), Food, Morals and Meanings: The pleasure and anxiety of eating, Routledge: London. 3.Jary,D.& Jary, J. (1991), The Harper Collins Dictionary of Sociology, Newyork,Harper Collins, p.101. 4.Maltby, Richard ed. (1989) Dreams for sale: popular culture in the 20th century:London:Harrap. 5.Montanari, M. (1996), The Culture of Food, Oxford UK: Blackwell. 6.Shanahan, Derek (2002), The geography of food, Journal for the study of food and society, Vol.6, No. 1, Pp 7-9. 7.Tylor, E.B. (1974), Primitive culture: Researches into development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art and culture, New York. Gorden press first publishes in 1871. 8.Warde, Allen & Martens, Lydia (2000), Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 9.Warde,Allen;Marten,Lydia;Olsen,Wendy(1999) Consumption and the problem of variety: cultural omnivorousness, social distinction and dining out, sociology 33:105-127. 10.Warde, Allen (1997), Consumption, Food and Taste: Culinary antinomies and commodities culture, Sage: London. 11.UNESCO. (2002), Universal Declaration on cultural Diversity, issued on International language day, feb.21, 2002. Read More