Food and the Self

Consumption, Production and Material Culture

By: Isabelle de Solier

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Hardcover | 10 October 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
216 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 15.88 x 2.54

Hardcover

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We often hear that selves are no longer formed through producing material things at work, but by consuming them in leisure, leading to 'meaningless' modern lives. This important book reveals the cultural shift to be more complex, demonstrating how people in postindustrial societies strive to form meaningful and moral selves through both the consumption and production of material culture in leisure.

Focusing on the material culture of food, the book explores these theoretical questions through an ethnography of those individuals for whom food is central to their self: 'foodies'. It examines what foodies do, and why they do it, through an in-depth study of their lived experiences. The book uncovers how food offers a means of shaping the self not as a consumer but as an amateur who engages in both the production and consumption of material culture and adopts a professional approach which reveals the new moralities of productive leisure in self-formation. The chapters examine a variety of practices, from fine dining and shopping to cooking and blogging, and include rare data on how people use media such as cookbooks, food television, and digital food media in their everyday life.

This book is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the meaning of food in modern life.

Industry Reviews

"In this latest title in the innovative 'Materializing Culture' series, de Solier, a PhD research fellow at Victoria University in Australia, focuses on the local population of middle-class 'foodies, ' though her findings can be extended to many similar groups loosely associated with slow food around the world. Through ethnographic research, de Solier finds that foodies have an intense but uneven moral engagement with what they eat, as well as a more traditional gourmet's attitude towards exclusivity and quality. Chapters cover their engagement with food TV and other media, and the importance of dining out, shopping, cooking, and blogging in the right places. The central analytical concept is 'productive leisure.' which connects foodism with other forms of 'serious consumption' like do-it-yourself house makeovers. De Solier treats the foodies gently, tracking their desire for hands-on engagement and their unconcious elitism. This important contribution to understanding what motivates contemporary food culture is a useful complement to Josee Johnston and Shyon Baumann's Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape (CH, Oct'10, 48-0941)." --R.R. Wilk, Indiana University, CHOICE

"Food and the Self provides an interesting and broad discussion of the complexities of consumption and production in the formation of identity in postindustrial modernity ... this book should be of great interest to graduate students and advanced scholars of modernity, production and consumption, and food studies. The book's focus on food and culture among middle and upper classes in metropolises is unique and an important contribution to the literature." - Anthropology of Food

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