Concepts and Practices of Food Consumptions in Modern Society

Abstract

After decades of comparative neglect, there has recently been an increase of interest in the topic of consumption. Some sociologists have made strong claims for the new structural role of consumption practice as a central focus of everyday life, a focus in earlier times provided by occupation. In such a view lifestyle increasingly becomes a basis of social identity, displacing class as the central organizing principle of social life. Most Sociological accounts of consumption, until very recently, implicitly began from a set of materialist premises, considering consumption a matter of survival in the face of unequally distributed resources. The classical sociology of Marx, Weber and Simmel considered consumption a function of production, and consumption patterns a corollary of class position. Consumption was an expression of a central social hierarchy, inequalities of resource being turned into tools of class and status group struggle.