TY - JOUR

T1 - Which context matters?

T2 - Tasting in everyday life practices and social science theories

AU - Mann, Anna

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - What influences how people taste the food they eat? This paper investigates howsensual engagements with food, particularly tasting it, become contextualized ineveryday life practices and social science theories. Based on ethnographic fieldworkin a Swiss hospital, the Kantonsspital Graubünden, the paper analyzes whatdoctors, patients and nurses bring up as shaping sensual engagements with food.It also investigates how sensual engagements with food become contextualized inthree social scientific studies on “taste,” “eating” and “tasting.” The paper arguesthat the three different contexts developed in these studies, namely “society,” “foodculture” and “in practice,” do not help to make sense of what was observed andwas brought up by the people working and living in the hospital as shaping sensualengagements with food: what happens before, after and around eating. The papertherefore adds “mundane goings-on” as a fourth context and concludes that contexualizing tasting allows the addressing of social issues. It recommends furtherinvestigation of the relation between contexts.

AB - What influences how people taste the food they eat? This paper investigates howsensual engagements with food, particularly tasting it, become contextualized ineveryday life practices and social science theories. Based on ethnographic fieldworkin a Swiss hospital, the Kantonsspital Graubünden, the paper analyzes whatdoctors, patients and nurses bring up as shaping sensual engagements with food.It also investigates how sensual engagements with food become contextualized inthree social scientific studies on “taste,” “eating” and “tasting.” The paper arguesthat the three different contexts developed in these studies, namely “society,” “foodculture” and “in practice,” do not help to make sense of what was observed andwas brought up by the people working and living in the hospital as shaping sensualengagements with food: what happens before, after and around eating. The papertherefore adds “mundane goings-on” as a fourth context and concludes that contexualizing tasting allows the addressing of social issues. It recommends furtherinvestigation of the relation between contexts.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Tasting

KW - Taste

KW - Everyday life

KW - Ethnography

KW - Social Science Theory

KW - Context

U2 - 10.1080/15528014.2015.1043105

DO - 10.1080/15528014.2015.1043105

M3 - Journal article

VL - 18

SP - 399

EP - 417

JO - Food, Culture and Society

JF - Food, Culture and Society

SN - 1528-9796

IS - 3

ER -