Food, the Body and the Self

by Deborah Lupton

• ISBN13: 9780803976481
• ISBN10: 0803976488
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-04-25
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd

Summary

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 and emotional responses to food.Food, the Body and the Self's strong interdisciplinary approach incorporates discussion of the work of a number of major contemporary social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, Elias, Kristeva, Grosz, Falk and Foucault.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Theoretical Perspectives on Food and Eating

Food, the Family and Childhood

Food, Health and Nature

Tastes and Distastes

The Asceticism//Consumption Dialectic

Conclusion