Food, health, and identity

293 Pages·1997·3.183 MB·English

by  Patricia Caplan

Food, Health and Identity
By addressing the issue of what we eat today, Food, Health and
Identity considers the way in which our food habits are changing,
and shows how our social and personal identities and our perception
of health and risk influence our choices.
The Introduction seeks to indicate how social scientists can help
us understand why people eat what they do. The following chapters,
written by well-known anthropologists and sociologists, discuss
themes of change and continuity in food and eating—the family
meal, wedding cakes, nostalgia and the invention of tradition, the
‘creolisation’ of British food, and increases in vegetarianism and
eating out. A second theme is that of identity, with studies of both
ethnic minorities and the dominant majority, as well as the creation
of individual identity through culinary lifestyle. Finally, questions
of health and risk perception are addressed in discussions of current
‘healthy eating’ advice and the way in which people respond to it,
including a study of recent BSE crises in the context of government/
media relations and the new environmental radicalism.
Food, Health and Identity is based on recent field research. It
addresses topical issues which are central to the study of
anthropology, sociology and health promotion.
Pat Caplan is Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths’
College, University of London.

Food, Health and
Identity
Edited by Pat Caplan
London and New York
First published 1997 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1997 Pat Caplan, selection and editorial matter;
individual chapters, the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Food, health, and identity/edited by Pat Caplan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Food habits—Great Britain. 2. Diet—Great Britain.
I. Caplan, Patricia.
GT2853.G7F66 1997
394.1'2'0941–dc21 96–51909
CIP

ISBN 0-203-44379-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75203-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-15679-3 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-15680-7 (pbk)
Contents
List of contributors vii
Preface and acknowledgements xi
1 Approaches to the study of food, health and identity 1
Pat Caplan
2 Family meals—a thing of the past? 32
Anne Murcott
3 Marriages, weddings and their cakes 50
Simon Charsley
4 How British is British food? 71
Allison James
5 Fast food/spoiled identity: Iranian migrants in the British
catering trade 87
Lynn Harbottle
6 ‘Bacon sandwiches got the better of me’: meat-eating and
vegetarianism in South-East London 111
Anna Willetts
7 Urban pleasure? On the meaning of eating out in a
northern city 131
Lydia Martens and Alan Warde
8 ‘We never eat like this at home’: food on holiday 151
Janice Williams
9 Too hard to swallow? The palatability of healthy eating
advice 172
Anne Keane
v
vi Contents
10 Being told what to eat: conversations in a Diabetes Day
Centre 193
Simon Cohn
11 Health, eating and heart attacks: Glaswegian Punjabi
women’s thinking about everyday food 213
Hannah Bradby
12 Scaremonger or scapegoat? The role of the media in the
emergence of food as a social issue 234
Jacquie Reilly and David Miller
13 Declining meat: past, present…and future imperfect? 252
Nick Fiddes
Index 267
Contributors
Hannah Bradby is a researcher at the MRC Medical Sociology
Unit at Glasgow University where her main areas of interest are
ethnicity, and religion and health, particularly in young people.
Pat Caplan is Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths’ College,
London. She has carried out fieldwork in Tanzania and South Asia
and her recent books include Gendered Fields (with D.Bell and
W.J.Karim; Routledge 1994), Understanding Disputes (Berg 1995),
and African Voices, African Lives (Routledge 1997). She has had a
long-standing interest in the anthropology of food and published
Feasts, Fasts and Famines (Berg 1995). From 1992 to 1996, she
directed the two ‘Concepts of Healthy Eating’ projects, funded by
the ESRC, which involved comparative studies carried out in South-
East London and West Wales.
Simon Charsley is a social anthropologist in the Department of
Sociology at Glasgow University. His fieldwork-based research has
been in Uganda, Scotland and India. He is the author of The Princes
of Nyakysua (East Africa Publishing House 1969), Culture and
Sericulture (Academic Press 1982), Rites of Marrying (Manchester
University Press 1991), Wedding Cakes and Cultural History
(Routledge 1992), and articles on these and other topics. He is
currently concerned chiefly with the study of development amongst
former ‘Untouchables’ in southern India.
Simon Cohn came to Goldsmiths’ College to work on a research
project on patient perceptions of health care in the UK National
Health Service. His own PhD research looked at concepts of health
and disease amongst people with diabetes. His current interests
include medical anthropology, individualism in western society, and
vii
viii Contributors
visual anthropology and representation. He has been centrally
involved with the applied anthropology group, Anthropology in
Action.
Nick Fiddes did his doctorate in the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently an Honorary
Research Fellow. He is the author of Meat: A Natural Symbol
(Routledge 1991) and has recently completed ESRC-funded
ethnographic research into the culture of the new ecological protest
movement in the UK.
Lynn Harbottle is a medical anthropologist and nutritionist. She
worked in Papua New Guinea prior to employment in the NHS and
later at Sheffield University, where she undertook a dietary survey
of British Pakistani and Bangladeshi weanlings. Her current
research explores the use of food as a marker of ethnicity and its
role in gendered power relations through the work of Iranian
migrants. Recent articles include ‘Feminism and medical
anthropology’ (1995), ‘“Palship”, parties and pilgrimage: kinship,
community formation and self-transformation of Iranian migrants
to Britain’ (1995) and ‘Towards a culturally sensitive research
approach’ (1996).
Allison James is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Anthropology at the
University of Hull. She has published a number of articles on the
anthropology of food and her other main research area is in
childhood studies. She is author of Childhood Identities (Edinburgh
University Press 1993) and joint author of Growing Up and
Growing Old (Sage 1993).
Anne Keane was a Research Associate in the Anthropology
Department, Goldsmiths’ College from 1992 to 1995, working on
the ‘Concepts of Healthy Eating’ project, part of the ESRC research
programme ‘The Nation’s Diet: The Social Science of Food
Choice’. She is currently completing her PhD thesis on food and the
body.
Lydia Martens is lecturer in the Department of Applied Social
Studies at the University of Paisley. Between 1994 and 1996 she
worked as Research Associate in the Department of Sociology,
Lancaster University.
David Miller is a member of the Stirling Media Research Institute.
He is the author of Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland,
Contributors ix
Propaganda and the Media (Pluto 1994), editor (with Bill Rolston)
of War and Words: The Northern Ireland Media Reader (Belfast:
Beyond the Pale Publications 1996) and author (with the Glasgow
Media Group) of Dying of Ignorance: AIDS, the Media and Public
Belief (forthcoming).
Anne Murcott has an MA in social anthropology and a PhD in
sociology. Her most recent book is The Sociology of Food: Diet,
Eating and Culture (with Stephen Mennell and Anneke van
Otterloo, Sage 1992) and she edited the international journal
Sociology of Health & Illness from 1982–87. Currently she is
Director of the ESRC (UK) research programme ‘The Nation’s
Diet: The Social Science of Food Choice’ and holds a research post
as Professor of the Sociology of Health at South Bank University,
London.
Jacquie Reilly is a researcher in the Department of Sociology at
Glasgow University. Her research interests have centred on the
production, content and reception of media messages in particular
on food safety issues. Current research includes a project on the
ESRC Risk Initiative entitled ‘The Media and Expert Constructions
of Risk’ which is investigating the processes leading to the
formation of accounts of risks and how these impact on public
policy. Main publications include ‘Food “scares” in the media’
(Glasgow University Media Group 1994), ‘Making an issue of food
safety: the media, pressure groups and the public sphere’ (in Donna
Maura and Jeffrey Sobal (eds) Food Eating and Nutrition as Social
Problems: Constructivist Perspectives, New York: Aldine De
Gruyter 1995).
Alan Warde is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Lancaster. He recently completed the project ‘Eating Out and
Eating In’ under the ESRC’s research programme ‘The Nation’s
Diet: The Social Science of Food Choice’. Research on food stems
from an interest in the sociology of consumption on which he has
written a number of articles. His new book, Consumption, Food and
Taste: Culinary Antinomies and Commodity Culture, will be
published by Sage in the spring of 1997.
Anna Willetts was a Research Associate in the Anthropology
Department, Goldsmiths’ College, from 1992 to 1995, working on
the ‘Concepts of Healthy Eating’ project, part of the ESRC research
programme ‘The Nation’s Diet: The Social Science of Food