The soup of the scholar: food ideology and social order in Song China

Abstract

Abstract This essay explores the food discourse elaborated by Chinese intellectuals in the Song period (960–1279) and puts forward a hypothesis concerning its social function. Starting from the Bourdieusian idea that different consumption styles support different visions of the social order, I first define luxurious eating and describe its social diffusion in Song. I then document and analyze the food ideology of frugality, characterized by an emphasis on simple cooking and naturalness as well as by a form of controlled hedonism which I call “Epicurean.” Finally, I offer a sociological interpretation of this food ideology, which I understand as an expression of Song intellectuals’ cultural capital: the scholars euphemistically took position against luxurious eating and the “temporal” (i.e. economic capital dominated) vision of the social order it signified; through the ideology of frugality, they supported an alternative, “spiritual” vision of society in which status is based on culture rather than wealth.