Families through the Lens of Food

Abstract

This chapter highlights food as a key lens through which a sociologist may understand family relations in social context. Given that the meaning of food and its material form are subject to variation and change across time and place, the concept of ‘social practice’ has been employed in its study. A practice approach engages with the habitual aspects of human behaviour that are not easily open to reflexive engagement. From this perspective, it becomes possible to understand how practices are established and consolidated, and how they change. A practice approach, moreover, engages with the constitutive elements relating to a social domain, for example, cooking, eating meals and washing up, and the sequencing of, and the linkage between, these and other practices. Thus, a focus on food can suggest the ways in which family experiences and practices are reproduced, are in tension, or in the process of change. The chapter then looks at cases and interview extracts which demonstrate some of the methodological benefits of food as a pretext for entry into the field of family lives.