Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality
ISBN: 9780252094880
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Illinois Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Food habits; Dinners and dining; Table etiquette; Eating (Philosophy); Social networks;

An insightful map of the landscape of social meals, Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality argues that the ways in which Americans eat together play a central role in social life in the United States. Delving into a wide range of research, Alice P. Julier analyzes etiquette and entertaining books from the past century and conducts interviews and observations of dozens of hosts and guests at dinner parties, potlucks, and buffets. She finds that when people invite friends, neighbors, or family members to share meals within their households, social inequalities involving race, economics, and gender reveal themselves in interesting ways: relationships are defined, boundaries of intimacy or distance are set, and people find themselves either excluded or included.