The Practice of Eating

This book reconstructs and extends sociological approaches to the understanding of food consumption. It identifies new ways to approach the explanation of food choice and it develops new concepts which will help reshape and reorient common understandings. Leading sociologist of food, Alan Warde, deals both with abstract issues about theories of practice and substantive analyses of aspects of eating, demonstrating how theories of practice can be elaborated and systematically applied to the activity of eating. The book falls into two parts. The first part establishes a basis for a practice-theoretic account of eating. Warde reviews research on eating, introduces theories of practice and constructs eating as a scientific object. The second part develops key concepts for the analysis of eating as a practice, showing how concepts like habit, routine, embodiment, repetition and convention can be applied to explain how eating is organised and coordinated through the generation, reproduction and transformation of a multitude of individual performances. The Practice of Eating thus addresses both substantive problems concerning the explanation of food habits and currently controversial issues in social theory, illustrated by detailed empirical analysis of some aspects of contemporary culinary life. It will become required reading for students and scholars of food and consumption in a wide range of disciplines, from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies to food studies, culinary studies and nutrition science.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Towards a Sociological Theory of Eating Chapter 3: Elements of a Theory of Practice Chapter 4: Elementary Forms of Eating Chapter 5: Organizing Eating Chapter 6: Habituation Chapter 7: Repetition and the Foundations of Competence Chapter 8: Conclusions: Practice Theory and Eating Out Notes References

About the Author :
ALAN WARDE is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He has held visiting positions in Adelaide, Mannheim, Sao Paolo, Paris and New York, and is part of the European Sociological Association Research Network on Consumption.

Review :
"Over the course of his exemplary career Alan Warde has emerge as an important - perhaps the important - theorist of eating and dining. In The Practice of Eating Warde provides a detailed analysis of the practice of dining and culinary production. Building on the centrality of consumption as a form of action, Warde synthesizes a wide range of theoretical approaches, applicable not only to the gastronomic world but in all corners of sociability. Warde has developed an approach to foodways as practice that belongs with the most trenchant works of contemporary theory." —Gary Alan Fine, Northwestern University and author of Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work "Rejecting conventional accounts of consumer choice, Alan Warde examines the routinized and habitual character of eating as a social practice. In a field that is prone to political rhetoric and media speculation, The practice of eating offers conceptual clarity and empirical rigour, a compelling synthesis of more than a decade's research on the sociology of consumption." —Peter Jackson, University of Sheffield "In this accomplished new book, Alan Warde conducts a substantive analysis of aspects of eating situations and performances in the light of theory, paying due attention to its various contexts. The growing ranks of sociologists in the broad area of food studies will welcome this ambitious attempt to unify a hitherto dispersed and disparate field by devising an comprehensive theory of how we eat." —Christel Lane, University of Cambridge "The book serves as a solid, multi-disciplinary bibliography of food studies. It can be acclaimed for its presentation on a versatile set of themes from various levels and domains of eating (from a very close up look at the orchestration of a restaurant menu to the aggregate level phenomena such as the obesity crisis and the spreading of taste for 'exotica'), which are noteworthy and relevant for sociologists of eating." —Acta Sociologica