Summary
Contents
Subject index
In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking analysis of the sociocultural and personal meanings of food and eating, Deborah Lupton explores the relationship between food and embodiment, the emotions and subjectivity. She includes discussion of the intertwining of food, meaning and culture in the context of childhood and the family, as well as: the gendered social construction of foodstuffs; food tastes, dislikes and preferences; the dining-out experience; spirituality; and the `civilized' body. She draws on diverse sources, including representations of food and eating in film, literature, advertising, gourmet magazines, news reports and public health literature, and her own empirical research into people's preferences, memories, experiences
The Asceticism/Consumption Dialectic
The Asceticism/Consumption Dialectic
As I have argued throughout the book, the discourses around food and eating in western cultures tend to privilege certain aspects, of which self-control is one of the most dominant, underpinned by notions of the ‘civilized’ and ‘healthy’ body. Eating is generally understood as a highly embodied experience that requires the continual exercise of self-discipline so as to avoid ‘animalistic’ behaviour and conform to societal norms. Yet there are other meanings around the consumption of food that valorize its pleasurable and hedonistic dimensions, its role in physical and emotional release. This chapter explores the dialectic between asceticism and consumption that exists in western societies. I begin with a detailed discussion of fasting practices as they contribute to subjectivity and embodiment, ...
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