Food and Eating Connected to Ideas of Home and Homeliness - Literature review Example

Food, Eating and the Feeling of ‘Being at Home’ While food intake is an inescapable physiological necessity, eating entails far more than its basic physiological dimensions. Quite clearly, the act of eating lies at the point of intersection of a whole series of intricate physiological, psychological, ecological, economic, political, social and cultural processes. (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, p. 6 cited in Nutch 2007, p.39). Home is the place where one supposedly the most comfortable; while a house refers to the physical constructed structure, home includes a geographical region, familiar areas and the cultural traditions of a physical location- the space referred to as ‘home’ is generally more related to the mental and emotional. Food thus becomes an inevitable and important part of ‘home’ and ‘homeliness’ with strong associations of the family (Benveniste 1973 cited in Hage 1997, p. 102) eating together, and many a times serves to strengthen the bond within the members. The understanding of home and homeliness that food and culinary customs and traditional associations offer under the scope of sociological theories, are analysed in this essay. The essay shall look at food practices from 1) the migrant point of view - the dimensions in which food and home are associated by people who stay away from their ‘homes’; 2) food practices as a form of self-identification; and finally, 3) food as it is viewed by cosmopolitan, globally exposed food adventurers. It shall conclude that just as the impacts of globalization are manifold and multidimensional, so too are the associations of food practices and homeliness, varied. Bourdieu’s ‘Social Capital’ and Food Pierre Bourdieu (1984) observes that groups or societies accumulate what is termed as the ‘cultural capital’; cultural capital is knowledge regarding the representative elements involved in the customs, belongings, behaviours, skills, tastes, postures and mannerisms within the society and imbibed by anyone who belongs to it. “Social distinctions were marked by tastes which were formed as a part of class habitus and were mutually recognizable between groups and individuals in society (Warde, Martens & Olsen 1999, p. 105). Food and taste acquired for certain types of food peculiar to a country or region serves to connect people with associations of the ambience and setting of ‘home’. This is because food prepared in each region uniquely caters to the tastes of the inhabitants there using the resources available. For example the unleavened bread (chappati) prepared in India is completely different from the bread prepared in West Asia in its texture and taste, though both use wheat flour as the main ingredient. The geographical origin of the material also plays a part in the food culinary culture, and the “essential qualities of a product are associated with some essence of place, an essence rooted in the soil and climate but also in traditions of production” (Bodenhausen cited in Cook and Crang 1996, p. 146); for example, the French wine has a distinct quality that varies with the region from which the grapes originate. The capacity to recognize such subtleties and distinctions especially in matters of food related to the geographical region of what one associates as ‘home’ then becomes ‘social capital’ mentioned by Bourdieu (1984). In other words, ‘being at home’ with some culinary practices, food and types of cooking therefore becomes a form of social capital peculiar to the individuals or ethnic groups of people, differentiating them from ‘others’ with different practices and tastes and hailing from other ethnicities. Migrants and Food and Home This experience of the ‘otherness’ and craving for the feeling of ‘home’ and ‘homeliness’ can be especially seen the ‘migrant home-building’ (Hage 1997, p. 104). In the current era of globalization, people travel more (Appadurai 1996) in search of jobs and career eventually moving far away from their native lands. Nostalgia for home and homeland often haunt them (Hage 1997, pp.104-9) and food plays an important positive role in mitigating their cravings for home. It is important to note that, by seeking food and culinary practices prevalent at home, the migrant is trying to ‘experience home’ away from home, and to live in the place of adoption, affording him/her a sense of security, and a connectivity with those seeking similar experiences. The joy and elation felt by the Lebanese immigrants Nayla and her husband on finding a particular type of ‘cucumbers’ is a good example; “I touched them…It was like touching my mother” who lived in Lebanon (cited in Hage 1997, p.109). Hage (1997) further illustrates the positive impact that food has on building a sense of homeliness in the migrant population of Australia with examples from newspaper reports of ethnic meeting places like “Ceylonese Tea Centre” in the 1970s and how they served like homesteads for ordinary immigrants (p. 111). In these ways, one can understand how “food provided the basis for homely practices within the private sphere” as much as it “provided the basis of practices of home-building in public sphere” (p.111) especially in promoting communality among the migrant population. Food and Cultural Identity The role of the individual as a consumer of food, his/her mind-set, personal preferences as ingrained into the individual’s personality and brought-up etc., also play a pre-dominant role in the way food and home are interlinked. This holds good irrespective of whether the individual is a migrant or a native within his/her own country. Nutch (2007) states that “this idea that food is an undeniably important element in shaping and maintaining our individual and cultural identities. As the self-illustrated example of sociologist Frank Nutch (2007) describes, being a Jewish-Italian born and a New Yorker he had very strong provincial tastes and food preferences. “It is not simply specific types of foods or particular, locally cultivated tastes, but also food combining which informs provincial attitudes” Nutch (2007) explains, describing his repulsion of the ‘salami sandwich’ that he had ordered in a “delicatessen” because the bread had butter on it (p. 38). He felt this feeling of repulsion despite his self-assessment of being at ‘home’ at a delicatessen, and the idea of tasting foreign food. Gabaccia (1998) explains that by observing the conservativeness with which an individual chooses food, we can easily reflect on the individual’s identity; this is because, “Humans cling tenaciously to familiar foods because they become associated with nearly every dimension of human social and cultural life” (p. 8). Observing that “Sociologists welcome the opportunity to analyse the social construction of taste, especially regarding the social distribution of tastes and consumption opportunities of distinctive foods” Nutch (2007) cites an example pertinent to culinary practices and home culture and the distinction referred to by Bourdieu (1984). Eating ‘foie gras’ and ‘cavier’ were considered symbolic of ‘good taste’ or choice that one can cultivate in his home culture; and more importantly, the North American scepticism regarding tasting food from unknown hierarchy of ‘other’ cultures or prepared by unknown hierarchy of chefs – were commonly found in his home country of North America (p. 45). Food eating and culinary practices can be intimate and personal to families, and distinguish between the insider and an outsider in a family. This becomes even more so whenever there is a feast or a celebration in the family or community. For example, Christmas; although Christmas is celebrated by millions of people around the world, the way they do it differs with culture and as much within individual families. In some parts of the world fruit cake with rum in it is a typical dish for the occasion, while Easter eggs are universal; Nutch (2007) observes the practices that characterized his home as “Christmas Eve was a very special occasion on which fish and shellfish would be the only flesh prepared. The evening meal would, in addition, always be taken late at night” (p. 45). Food Preferences and Cosmopolitan Identities Hage (1997) observes the subtle changes brought about by the migrant population on the dominant culture, in a small but significant way. Although waves of multicultural migrant population brought with them their culinary practices and eating preferences with them, hardly impacted the dominant Anglican culture in terms of food, and their tastes were largely undisturbed. What multiculturalism did to Australians, however, was to expose the dominant culture to the foreign foods in a few public and private spheres. The result in some cases have been positive, as exemplified in the case of an Australian researcher taking up to the taste of a Lebanese recipe of minced meat with onions and pine nuts (Hage 1997, p. 114) and also negative, with cases of Australians being offended by the smell of native Lebanese food, sometimes even ending in “mild violence” (p.114). The notion of ‘home’ and ‘homeliness’ is entwined in the culture of eating and while one may be generous and accept invasion into this notional space occasionally, it may not be tolerated on a more permanent basis. To explain this further, culinary preferences and the notion of home also becomes a field of power play, sometimes. This is evident in the “ambivalence” displayed by the attitude of members from the dominant culture; they exhibit cosmopolitan tastes and love to consume the culinary treats of migrants, and yet resent it deep down when the latter progress and open restaurants that bring in the home ambience and culinary culture. The example of the attitude of the Australian named Pat, to the Lebanese starting a restaurant testifies this point (Hage 1997, p. 116). The cosmopolitan experience of food and its association with home are not uniform, however. Duruz’s (2010) account of James Maitland, a typical British ‘bloke’ yearning for ‘otak-otak’ a Malaysian dish resembling an omelette (p. 46) offers a different perspective. A rare glimpse into how native Britons associate home with some of their culinary practices. Comparing British food with the variety of Asian food, Duruz (2010 p. 45) suggests that the former may have been too bland for young Maitland and cites Scruton’s description and of the ‘‘flavourless stodge’’ (2000, p.51) and “the much-loved stew as a national dish” as having the “unmistakable air of culinary poverty. . Ours is the colour of washing-up water and smells of old people’’ (Slater 2000, p. 3), to prove his claim of English food. In these instances one is able to see the repudiation of some Britons of their homeland culinary recipes. It almost appears to justify Maitland’s nostalgia for the Malayan ‘otak-otak’ “as an example of consumer cannibalism – a desire to literally consume difference through appropriating others’ food and traditions as ‘exotic” (Duruz 2010 p. 45). Duruz’s (2010) article gives us an insight, of how, for some those individuals of the western culture exposed to multicultural food practices have clear distinctions of what is ‘home’ food and what is ‘cosmopolitan’ food for them. For others however, there is an in-between space, which ‘drifts’ between the two. For example, Duruz (2010) cites the comparison between Saunders (2001 p. 51), whose “comfort and nostalgia for homely foods are aligned” with fish and chips, and “congee is the code for their opposite that other, more adventurous self” and Maitland for whom “the comfort/cosmopolitan identity divide is not such a sharp one and, contradictorily, meanings of otak-otak can drift between those of the homely and of the exotic (p.47). Furthermore, ‘otak-otak’ is portrayed as an entangled object (Crang 1996; Law 2001: 276 cited in Duruz 2010, p. 47), and “its nuances of class, ethnicity, gender and sensory embodiment produce a memorable moment for identity, of floating and dreaming, of entanglement and constraint - a moment shaped by specific convergences of power in time and place” (Duruz 2010, p. 47). Conclusion The concept of home and house, differ in that a home is more of an emotionally constructed space that includes family and friends while house may refer to the physical location and structure. The emotional and mental associations that one develops with the habits, customs, practices of living, eating, and interacting with others become an integral part of the individual and the social capital which the individual automatically inherits. This is especially strong in the case of food habits, eating and culinary practices and is manifested in many ways among different cultures. This essay has examined the theory of ‘cultural capital’ put forth by Bourdieu (1984) with respect food and eating practices and tried to understand the same from the migrant point of view with examples from Lebanese workers in Australia. Food habits and the manner in which they are used to identify what one stands for is explicated with the example of a Jewish-Italian New Yorker and his food preferences. In the last section, the culinary longings for Asian food of a ‘British bloke’ becomes an identifiable ‘floating’ ‘entanglement’ and symbolizes a section of the cosmopolitan relationship with ‘homely’ food. In sum, this exercise has revealed a wide cornucopia of bonds and attachments that people, both individuals and groups, hold with their native ethnic food habits, and in some cases, with ‘exotic’ culinary practices too. Thus, it shall not be an exaggeration to state that the associations are as varied as the influences of globalization itself and makes for interesting study. References Appadurai, Arjun, 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Bearsworth, Alan and Teresa Keil (1997). Sociology on the Menu: An invitation to the Study of Food and Society. London: Routledge. Benveniste, Emile (1973). Indo-European Language and Society. Faber & Faber, London. pp. 239-251. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, London, Routledge. Cook, Ian and Crang, Philip (1996). “The World On a Plate: Culinary Culture, Displacement and Geographical Knowledges” in Journal of Material Culture. Vol 1 (131). P. 146. Available at < http://mcu.sagepub.com/content/1/2/131.abstract> Duruz, Jean (2010). “Floating food: Eating ‘Asia’ in kitchens of the diaspora” in Emotion, Space and Society 3 (2010). Elsevier. Pp. 45–49. Gabaeeia, Donna R. 1998. We Are What We Eat. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Hage, Ghassan (1997). “At Home in the Entrails of the West” in Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth, Michael Symonds Eds. Home/World: Space, Community & Marginality in Sydney’s West. Pluto Press Australia Ltd. NSW. Pp. 99-153. Nutch, Frank (2007). “Hard to Swallow: Reflections on the Sociology of Culinary Culture” in The discourse of sociological Practice, 8 (i) Spring 2007. Pp. 37-53. Saunders, Alan (2001). “The comforts of strangers”. Good Weekend supplement of Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May: 57. Scruton, Roger (2000). England: An Elergy. Chatto & Windus, London. Slater, Nigel (2007). Eating for England. Harper, London. Warde, A., Martens, L. & Olsen, W. (1999) “Consumption and the Problem of Variety: Cultural Omnivorousness, Social Distinction and Dining Out”, Sociology, 33 (1), 105-127. Read More