Book Reviews
A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite (2nd edn)
John Germov and Lauren Williams (eds)
ISBN: 0-195516-25-7 2004 350 BP pages Victoria: Oxford University Press
Megan Warin
Department of Anthropology, Durham University, United Kingdom
Paula M Barrett
Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD
Germov and William's second edition of A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite (2004) provides an important update in the expanding field of food sociology. As the editors note, several texts have appeared since the first edition in 1999, and the new thematic format of the book aims to include some of this new literature and accompanying theoretical developments. Changes to this edition include a revised structure, an updated introductory chapter, and a number of new chapters reflecting developments in key areas such as biotechnology, agribusiness, economic change and the social construction of eating disorders. There are now five sections which pivot around key sociological themes. Aptly described as a 'potlatch of topics' (p.xi), these key themes include the food system, food and public health nutrition, food and social differentiation, and food and the body. In addition, the useful pedagogic features have been revised and include updates of the appendix, investigative questions for each chapter and web sources, and a new Social Appetite website.
In recognition of the interdisciplinary nature of studying food and nutrition, one aim is to introduce a multidisciplinary readership to sociological enquiries into food (p.1). The editors represent sociology and nutrition, and almost all the contributing authors in the volume demonstrate the value of crossing these once sharply-demarcated disciplinary boundaries. While this collaboration is to be highly commended, it is questionable whether the book takes full advantage of a multidisciplinary perspective. Given that the disciplines of anthropology and sociology share the so-called founding fathers (Durkheim, Weber and Marx and more contemporary theorists such as Bourdieu), it is surprising that anthropology is only given a passing nod in this work. As Mintz and Du Bois (2002) note in their review of the study of food and eating, anthropology has a long history in this field. On this note, Dixon's analysis of supermarket power is a welcome addition to the revised volume, as she explicitly draws upon ethnographic techniques and anthropological theory (such as Appadurai), in order to investigate the distribution and exchange of foods and food-related services (p.100). A text entitled A Sociology of Food and Nutrition should be orientated to the discipline of sociology, and I felt it a serious omission to ignore the close relationship with anthropology (particularly when several authors employ ethnographic research methods).
Underpinning the book's teaching premise is the use of Mills' (1959) sociological imagination. The four arms of the template (historical, cultural, structural and critical) are separated to provide different explanations of a particular sociological problem. While sociological imagination is useful for those new-to-sociological approaches, I agree with the editors (p.8) when they caution that the template 'simplifies the process of sociological analysis', for it falsely separates components of the social world which are intimately connected in everyday life.
The separation of 'culture' from history and structure is a particularly worrying and spurious division. As it is singularly represented in the sociological imagination and in A Sociology of Food and Nutrition, culture is synonymous with an outmoded concept of 'tradition' or 'custom', rather than a broader understanding of cultures as patterns of behaviours, beliefs and symbolic systems acquired in a social context and shared (contested and adapted) through social relationships. For example, in her chapter entitled 'Culture, Food and Nutrition In Increasingly Culturally Diverse Societies', Ikeda rests her analysis on a fixed, structuralist assumption of 'western' and 'traditional' cultures. 'Traditional cultures' (read 'non-western') are represented as spiritual, more holistic and able to call on a wide range of 'alternative' forms of healing. Despite recognition that 'societies … are increasingly culturally pluralistic' (p.305), the use of dichotomous thinking homogenises and simplifies the complexities of migration and cultural transformations about which Ikeda wishes to write.
In an attempt to update Mills and overcome such structuralist assumptions, the editors have introduced (and in this edition extended) the structure/agency debate through Norbert Elias' concept of figurations in which structure and human agency are seen as 'dynamic and operating through people's daily practices and routines' (p.10). But despite the introduction, many chapters do not develop this theme. Elias' theoretical import is only picked up once again by Wick in her excellent chapter on vegeterianism.
Similarly, only one chapter has taken Mennell's cue to extend the structure/agency dynamic as articulated by Bourdieu in his concept of habitus. Germov and Williams use habitus to explain the ways in which bodily dispositions and gestures become taken for granted and ingrained as markers of class (p.252). Yet other discussions of structure/agency throughout the book miss opportunities to develop Bourdieu's ideas. For example, Williams and Germov's chapter on women, food and dieting attempts to provide an account of social and cultural reproduction of the thin ideal, but their theoretical arguments use general terms, such as structuralist and post-structuralist approaches (which include many theoretical variations), to understand a phenomenon which is practised at an everyday, embodied level. A more pointed discussion of Bourdieu (or indeed Foucault) could have been used to explain the cultural processes whereby bodily dispositions are internalised, become part of people's everyday practices, and are reproduced. In the field of food and eating, Bourdieu's valuable insights into embodiment, habitus and reproduction (not to mention the body as a powerful site of social/cultural and economic capital, symbolic power and violence), has direct relevance to the thin ideal. Given that Bourdieu's Distinction is cited in this new edition as one of the ten most influential sociological books of the twentieth century, one might expect more of a critical engagement with his theories.
Despite the missed opportunities already mentioned, there are several excellent chapters which use food as a window to discuss and extend theory. Hepworth's discussion of eating disorders provides a clear explanation of social constructionism and how it might be applied to the different discursive constructions of female bodies. Coveney's analysis of nutritional advice given to families provides a cogent argument framed by Foucault's concepts of power and knowledge. Dixon draws upon a range of theorists in her cultural economic analysis of supermarket power. And Murphy's research into the politics and morality of breastfeeding uses contemporary risk theorists to examine the intersecting discourses of responsibility and motherhood.
In its updated form, this book remains an excellent teaching and foundational resource. A great strength of this edition is its pedagogic features. The sociological imagination template is becoming the hallmark of Germov's work, yet in attempting to provide a book which appeals to both a general audience (with little or no sociology background) and undergraduate students across a range of disciplines, the new edition falls short of a promising engagement with interdisciplinary approaches to cultural theory. Where, for example, is the engagement with theories of embodiment or phenomenology with which we are tantalised in the introduction? In a book which pivots around the richness of the social appetite and 'its power to stimulate imagination and memory as well as those senses [of] taste, smell, sight …' (p.4), there is a striking absence of phenomenologically driven analyses. In acknowledging the potential for such gaps in the new volume, the editors rightly allow that the book does not supply all the answers to understanding food and eating. A Sociology of Food and Nutrition does provide an excellent introduction for classic examinations in this field, and should be supplemented with key theoretical readings from associated disciplines.
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