Feeding the family in India: an approach to household food consumption

Abstract

There is a complex relationship between households and the food chain, consisting of several crucial linkages (Niehof, 1998). Farming households relate to the food chain in a more comprehensive manner because they are involved both at the beginning and at the end of the food chain, in food production and food consumption. The role of non-farming households in food provision starts at acquiring food, by purchasing, exchanging or receiving food. However, non-farming households are not just consumers of food. All households are – to a greater or lesser extent – involved in activities that determine the quantity and quality of food that individual household members in the end get on their plate, such as food processing, storage, preparation and distribution of food among household members. Goody (1982, p. 37) distinguishes four phases in the transformation of food, namely, production, distribution, preparation and consumption, and links these phases to the processes of growing, allocating or storing, cooking and eating. As the loci for these processes, he mentions farm, granary or market, kitchen and table. In this paper, we focus on the transformation of food once it has left the farm and comes into the household up until it is consumed. We see the household as the locus for this subchain of processes, thereby subsuming kitchen and table under household. By choosing the household as locus, we treat it as the level of analysis. We see households as ‘one of the basic units of human social organization. Though variable in form, depending upon cultural norms, environmental conditions, and particular circumstances, households represent to a large extent the arena of everyday life for a vast majority of the world’s people’ (Clay and Schwartzweller, 1991, p. 1, our italics). Rudie (1995, p. 248) describes this ‘arena of everyday life’ as a ‘coresidential unit, usually family based in some way, which takes care of resource management and primary needs of its members’. The last part of this description is especially important for our purposes, because food needs are primary needs, and providing for them requires the use and management of resources. Focusing on the micro level of the household does not mean that we see households as closed and static systems. Household boundaries are permeable, and household composition changes through time. Household members are part of social networks beyond their own household, and the household as an institution interfaces with other institutions. Households can be seen as mediating agencies between the individual and society. Within households, social norms and cultural values are given concrete form. Households adapt to changing external circumstances, but through their internal dynamics, they also generate change (Pennartz and Niehof, 1999). The purpose of this paper is to look at how social and cultural variables affect the processes of household food provision and consumption. We hope to bring out more clearly the importance of the context and to enhance insights into the factors that determine family food consumption. The context is that of Haryana State in India, where data were collected among 75 rural and 75 urban households during 2002. The study of food and eating is a field where sociologists and anthropologists of various theoretical inclinations have shed their light upon. Food and eating have been accorded functional significance, as contributing to social cohesion. Structural anthropology has viewed the cuisine of a society as a language in which societal structures are encoded, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work has paved the way for relating food to lifestyles. Claude Levi-Strauss’s dictum that some foods are good to think and his culinary triangle have been very influential for a long time, and have been most eloquently disputed by Marvin Harris. The social and cultural significance of various types of meals has been the subject of a now famous analysis by Mary Douglas. (For a discussion on these theoretical developments, see Mennell et al. , 1993, pp. 1–19). We may add that food and eating are also gendered, meaning that men and women relate differently to food and eating because of their different roles in society, notably with regard to reproductive roles. Furthermore, in any society, femininity and masculinity are given different culture-specific aspects that reflect in gender-specific food preferences, food prescriptions, food taboos or diets. In this paper, we are theoretically eclectic, drawing on various theoretical insights regarding both the social and the cultural significance of food and eating, and the relationship between them.