Reflecting a growing interest in consumption practices, and particularly relating to food, this cross disciplinary volume brings together diverse perspectives on our (often taken for granted) domestic mealtimes. By unpacking the meal as a set of practices - acquisition, appropriation, appreciation and disposal - it shows the role of the market in such processes by looking at how consumers make sense of marketplace discourses, whether this is how brand discourses influence shopping habits, or how consumers interact with the various spaces of the market. Revealing food consumption through both material and symbolic aspects, and the role that marketplace institutions, discourses and places play in shaping, perpetuating or transforming them, this holistic approach reveals how consumer practices of ‘the meal’, and the attendant meaning-making processes which surround them, are shaped. This wide-ranging collection will be of great interest to a wide range of scholars interested in marketing, consumer behaviour and food studies, as well as the sociology of both families and food.

Preface -- Introduction: the practice of the meal / David Marshall, Benedetta Cappellini and Elizabeth Parsons -- Acquisition -- Authentic food and the double nature of branding / Søren Askegaard, Dorthe Brogård Kristensen and Sofia Ulver-Sneistrup -- The supermarket revisited : families shopping food / Malene Gram -- Working your way down : re-balancing Bourdieu's capitals in times of need / Benedetta Cappellini, Alessandra Marilli and Elizabeth Parsons -- The multi-cultural food market : grocery stores approaching foreign-born consumers in Sweden / Karin M. Ekström -- Appropriation -- Appropriation / Alice Julier -- Appropriating bimby on the internet : perspectives on technology mediated meals by a virtual brand community / Monica Truninger -- The digital virtual dimension of the meal / Janice Denegri-Knott and Rebecca Jenkins -- Fraught contexts and mediated culinary practices : ontological practices and politics / Paul Hewer Part III: Appreciation -- Consuming the family and the meal : representations of the family meal in women's magazines over 60 years / David Marshall, Teresa Davis, Margaret Hogg, Tanja Schneider and Alan Petersen -- From harmony to disruption and inability : on the embodiment of mothering and its consumption / Susanna Molander -- The intersection of family dinners and high school schedules in urban China / Ann Veeck, Hongyan Yu, and Fang (Grace) Yu -- Meal deviations : children's food socialisation and the practice of snacking / David Marshall -- Disposal -- The milk in the sink : waste, date labeling and food disposal / Carl Yngfalk -- The quest for the empty fridge : examining consumers' mindful food disposition / Elina Närvänen, Nina Mesiranta, and Annilotta Hukkanen -- "Don't waste the waste" : dumpster dinners among garbage gourmands / Marie Mourad and Alex Barnard -- Shit happens : excrement as fear of waste, and waste of fear / Robin Canniford and Alan Bradshaw -- Concluding remarks / Benedetta Cappellini, David Marshall and Elizabeth Parsons

This book reconstructs and extends sociological approaches to the understanding of food consumption. It identifies new ways to approach the explanation of food choice and it develops new concepts which will help reshape and reorient common understandings. Leading sociologist of food, Alan Warde, deals both with abstract issues about theories of practice and substantive analyses of aspects of eating, demonstrating how theories of practice can be elaborated and systematically applied to the activity of eating. The book falls into two parts. The first part establishes a basis for a practice-theoretic account of eating. Warde reviews research on eating, introduces theories of practice and constructs eating as a scientific object. The second part develops key concepts for the analysis of eating as a practice, showing how concepts like habit, routine, embodiment, repetition and convention can be applied to explain how eating is organised and coordinated through the generation, reproduction and transformation of a multitude of individual performances. The Practice of Eating thus addresses both substantive problems concerning the explanation of food habits and currently controversial issues in social theory, illustrated by detailed empirical analysis of some aspects of contemporary culinary life. It will become required reading for students and scholars of food and consumption in a wide range of disciplines, from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies to food studies, culinary studies and nutrition science.

2021 Catholic Media Association Award first place award in Catholic Social Teaching In The Meal That Reconnects, Dr. Mary McGann, RSCJ, invites readers to a more profound appreciation of the sacredness of eating, the planetary interdependence that food and the sharing of food entails, and the destructiveness of the industrial food system that is supplying food to tables globally. She presents the food crisis as a spiritual crisis—a call to rediscover the theological, ecological, and spiritual significance of eating and to probe its challenge to Christian eucharistic practice. Drawing on the origins of Eucharist in Jesus’s meal fellowship and the worship of early Christians, McGann invites communities to reclaim the foundational meal character of eucharistic celebration while offering pertinent strategies for this renewal.

Offers advice about adopting the habit of preparing lunch at work and dining with coworkers, instead of rushing through the meal, and embracing a lifestyle that allows food to be savored, including more than fifty simple recipes.

Explores the practice of eating together as Christian worship The gospel story is filled with meals. It opens in a garden and ends in a feast. Records of the early church suggest that believers met for worship primarily through eating meals. Over time, though, churches have lost focus on the centrality of food— and with it a powerful tool for unifying Christ’s diverse body. But today a new movement is under way, bringing Christians of every denomination, age, race, and sexual orientation together around dinner tables. Men and women nervous about stepping through church doors are finding God in new ways as they eat together. Kendall Vanderslice shares stories of churches worshiping around the table, introducing readers to the rising contem­porary dinner-church movement. We Will Feast provides vision and inspiration to readers longing to experience community in a real, physical way.

Introduction : The Social Life of Food -- Part I. Laying the Groundwork -- Framing Food Investigation -- The Practices of a Meal in Society -- Part II. Current Food Studies in Archaeology -- The Archaeological Study of Food Activities -- Food Economics -- Food Politics : Power and Status -- Part III. Food and Identity : The Potentials of Food Archaeology -- Food in the Construction of Group Identity -- The Creation of Personal Identity : Food, Body and Personhood -- Food Creates Society