Practices Of Commensality Research Articles

‘Commensal scenes’: Problematizing presence in restaurants in the digital age

As guests’ norms and behaviours are rapidly evolving in the digital world, explicitly problematizing commensality, a term designating the social aspects of eating with others, is needed in hospitality contexts. This article introduces the "commensal scene" concept, applying Social presence theory to redefine commensality in dining settings amidst digital-age transformations. Challenging traditional views of physical co-presence, it explores the multi-spatial, multi-levelled dynamics of being 'with others' in both physical and digital contexts. The model allows for a deeper understanding of how digital media reshapes presence beyond mere spatial factors. It highlights the evolving nature of guest behaviours and norms, focusing on the interplay between different communication mediums and responsive social spaces. This innovative approach offers new insights into emerging commensal practices, proposing a framework for designing relevant dining experiences in a digitally-influenced world.

Commensality research in commercial hospitality: A systematic review

As socialities evolve in the digital world, the appositeness of various established concepts in fields like hospitality research can be challenged. This paper explores one of such concept, commensality, a form of sociality that is familiar and conventional in food and beverage venues like restaurants. This first systematic review on the topic positions the notion within commercial hospitality-related research, with findings suggesting a lack of common lexicon and theoretical underpinnings. Commensal practices are frequently used to create contrast with practices like solo dining, while its most common instances in hospitality venues are implicitly oversimplified and their benefits overstated. With both practical and theoretical implications in mind, we call for scholars to contribute towards a more critical and unified conceptualization of commensal practices in commercial hospitality contexts.

Commensality as social integration in Neolithic Çatalhöyük: Pottery, faunal, and architectural approaches

We have considered a range of commensality in Neolithic Çatalhöyük using ceramics, animal bones, and architecture. Integrating the data allowed us to capture the change in commensal practices over the Final occupational phase (ca. 6300–5950 cal BC). The shift from community commensality to family commensality is marked by a decrease in the size of jars, accompanied by slight changes in the size of bowls. These types of vessels were used both for cooking, as shown by soot and lipid residue analysis, and for serving, as can be inferred from the more open form, apparent with the bowls. In the case of bowls, this result contrasts with previous findings suggesting that they had relevance for plant foods only. When we consider feasting events, the data on everyday commensal practice can be seen to contrast with this exceptional commensality. In both, the main role is played by cattle, which are the driver of change as the status of the taxon moves from wild to domestic. Changes in culinary and social practices are embedded in architectural changes in the form of growing number of open spaces which served as places where people could share a meal.

Quality and Genuineness in the World of Sicilian Olive Oil

This article draws on the concept of authenticity as it is often deployed in regards to food, and specifically in regards to foods with Geographical Indication certifications (GIs). Authenticity, as a concept, does boundary work by coding some objects or subjects as authentic, defining them against inauthentic others. Power dynamics inhere in any use of the processes of authentication, which render the authentic as noteworthy (Bendix 1997). Following calls to practice the “arts of noticing” (Tsing 2015) and to question our own ethnographic categories (De Martino 1975), this article takes the case of the olive oil sector in Sicily, Italy, and Sicilian Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) extra virgin olive oil, to think through authenticity and processes of authentication through the lens of two related concepts: quality (qualità) and genuineness (genuinità). I conceptualize qualità as a top-down articulation of authenticity: Sicilian olive and olive oil producers’ articulation of authenticity and excellence in response to a global hierarchy of value (Herzfeld 2004) in which they are situated and to which they respond. Genuinità, on the other hand, I argue is a bottom-up articulation of authenticity and goodness, one concerned less with international recognition and chemical purity and more with social relationships of trust and practices of commensality. I argue that qualità is a powerful measure of authenticity and a livelihood strategy for Sicilian oliviculturalists, but that genuinità is perhaps an even more powerful measure of authenticity in its capacity to create or reinscribe social bonds.

Nation building and social change in the United Arab Emirates through the invention of Emirati cuisine

This article aims to analyse how the invention of a national cuisine in the United Arab Emirates takes part in the journey of building the nation, both as a metaphor and as performance of larger political and ideological processes. It analyses the discourses of chefs and professional cooks that are or have been tagged as Emirati food experts. In the Emirati nation building process, the construction of identity is not ‘defined by the other’ against which the image of a common ‘us’ should be reflected. This is also mirrored in the national cuisine in the making, which is developing mostly endogamously. Emirati food both participates in and tells the story of nation building in the UAE, through three overlapping stages of development: traditional, modern and fusion food, which correspond to different moments of the perceived nation development and its fit within Western definitions of both national-states and modernity. Emirati food also helps to create identity borders, by defining who is allowed to taste the authentic flavours, through practices of commensality, and who is able to replicate them in restaurants. This article highlights the connections between nation building, social transformation and food, and explores the ways in which constructions of Emirati cuisine reflect discourses and practices of national belonging.

Reflection: Snatched Commensality: To eat or not to eat together in times of Covid-19 in France

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the French Government imposed a strict lockdown from March 17th to May 11th 2020. These extraordinary times challenged the social norm of commensality, a practice that is particularly strong and engrained in France. How has lockdown impacted meal-sharing habits? How have the rules and norms of commensality withstood the weakening of social bonds caused by lockdown? Based on a qualitative study of 20 socially diverse households, this essay proposes a typology of adaptive commensal eating patterns: 1) Eating together can provide reassurance by reproducing ordinary routines or by enacting food traditions; 2) Tinkering with lockdown rules leads to creative new forms of commensality, or to an ersatz of commensality; 3) Sharing every meal with the same people can trigger the rejection of commensal practices. These patterns may also represent possible phases in the experience of lockdown, since some individuals shifted from one pattern to another. The final part of the paper discusses the very nature of the social link highlighted through the lens of commensality.

Social eating initiatives and the practices of commensality

Social eating initiatives are a mode of food provisioning and eating that have become increasingly popular in the UK. These organisations provide a menu of low-cost meals prepared using food surpluses and deliberately serve food communally to improve social inclusion. Although these community initiatives have grown rapidly in popularity, research into their value from the perspective of participants is currently limited. This article presents data from a concurrent multi-method study conducted across multiple sites of the Nottingham Social Eating Network to explain the emergence of these novel social configurations. The results show this form of commensality, or group eating practice, is not simply a consequence of reducing food waste or food insecurity. Instead these initiatives are enacted through a series of intersecting social practices, which include: the restructuration of the shared mealtime; alimentary contribution; and performances of care. The findings provide important insights into the values expressed in these emergent initiatives and are therefore useful for framing social eating in public policy.

Las prácticas de comensalidad como estrategia ideológica en el área central de la Contestania ibérica (VII-I a. C.)

In this paper, we analyze a type of ritual practices with a great potential in structuring social and power relationships, specifically those related to the communal consumption of food and drink. One of our aims is to link together these commensal practices with ideological strategies deployed by the elites within the communities of central Contestania. We adopt a multi-scalar methodological approach and a broad diachronic perspective, between viith and ist centuries bc. We approach this kind of practices from the study of ceramic repertoires, mainly imported products in many cases related to the consumption of wine, their contexts of appearance, and their spatial reflection, defining what we could call a ‘commensal landscape’. This perspective and its combination with other variables such as the evolution of settlement patterns over seven centuries or its relation with different categories of feast and ideological strategies, will allow us to better understand the nuanced social processes which took place in this specific area of central Mediterranean Iberia during the Protohistory.

Family meals in Santiago de Chile: An analysis of the role of family, gender and social class in commensality

Family meals are part of the social reproduction process of “making a family”, but few studies have been performed outside Europe or North America and few of them have considered different family arrangements and cultural scenarios. This study aimed to examine how socio-demographic characteristics influence the probability of eating with family members only, drawing on the case of Santiago, Chile. In this study we analyze the commensal practices of 625 adults living in Santiago, and explore how these practices are influenced by family structure and social background. Respondents kept a seven-days food journal recording what they ate, when, where and with whom, resulting in 14,085 recorded food events (average 3.2 foods per day per person). Logistic regressions were estimated predicting the probability of eating with family members. The results showed that a high percentage of food events, namely, 63% of them, took place with family members only. Moreover, the probability of eating with family members differed between meals when considering different socio-demographics characteristics: working status and sex were more significant for breakfasts and lunches, while social class and the presence of children only gained importance for lunches and evening meals. On the other hand, the existence of a partner of the head of household was the most significant variable in predicting family meals, which can be associated with the feeling of “making a family” that family meals provide. Finally, unlike international evidence, in Santiago the working class is more likely to eat with family members only, compared to the service class. These findings reveal the importance of studying family commensality in different cultural scenarios, where other contextual or structural mechanisms could be operating when family meals take place.

A cross-cultural approach to eating together: Practices of commensality among French, German and Spanish young adults

This article explores commensal practices of French, German and Spanish young adults. In doing so, it aims to fill a gap in research on commensality and on contemporary eating practices in Europe within a qualitative cross-cultural approach. The different nationalities of the informants, along with their country of residence, contribute to emphasizing cultural diversity and laying the foundations for the highlighting of poignant differences between French, German and Spanish young people, particularly in relation to meal times and content, places of food sociability, social organization surrounding shared meals and the role of food sharing in their social life. These aspects reveal different social meanings attached to food and commensality, as well as variability of commensal forms between young people living in or coming from different European countries.

Iron Age Reciprocity

This paper focuses on reciprocity in the context of Bronze Age collapse and early Iron Age ‘reboot’. The highest level of Mycenaean hierarchy collapsed, but neither the entire system, nor the entire ideology, vanished with the palaces: the basileus and a warrior elite survived and moved into places of authority. The circulation of prestige goods through networks of relationships continued, connecting especially the Levant and Cyprus with Crete and Euboia in the early Iron Age. Such objects and the relationships they embody created and maintained control of space and time through long-distance connections with the eastern Mediterranean. Items such as Cypriot bronze stands and other drinking paraphernalia combined the practices of commensality with the ideology of lineage and ancestors previously utilized by the wanax, but now in support of a new order. The concept of ‘house societies’ is introduced to suggest that houses, both the structures and the concept of social grouping, materially manifest claims of duration and power. The monumental burial building of Toumba at Lefkandi may be staking such a claim, with exotic antiques (rather than Mycenaean heirlooms). In the aftermath of disruptions at the close of the Bronze Age, including perhaps those of elite lineages, Lefkandi may be an attempt to found a lineage or a ‘house’, constituted by feasting and gifts, creating a kinship different than one based strictly on birth.

Fare for Empire: Commensal Events in Colonial Bermuda

As host to numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century public events, the State House in St. George’s, Bermuda, is an optimal location for the investigation of commensal hospitality in the dynamic socio-political environment of the Atlantic commons. The site served as a stage for the negotiation of social capital; events held at the site were attempts to consolidate and reinforce a loyalist community on Bermuda. Archaeological evidence—in the form of ceramics, drinking vessels, and faunal remains—materialize the elite commensal practices that took place in the civic space. Architectural and archival lines of evidence illustrate the social and political contexts that made these events a necessity for the maintenance of Empire in the early modern Atlantic world.

Perceptions and practices of commensality and solo-eating among Korean and Japanese university students: A cross-cultural analysis.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVESCommensality, eating together with others, is a major representation of human sociality. In recent time, environments around commensality have changed significantly due to rapid social changes, and the decline of commensality is perceived as a serious concern in many modern societies. This study employs a cross-cultural analysis of university students in two East Asian countries, and examines cross-cultural variations of perceptions and actual practices of commensality and solo-eating.SUBJECTS/METHODSThe analysis was drawn from a free-list survey and a self-administrative questionnaires of university students in urban Korea and Japan. The free-listing survey was conducted with a small cohort to explore common images and meanings of commensality and solo-eating. The self-administrative questionnaire was developed based on the result of the free-list survey, and conducted with a larger cohort to examine reasons and problems of practices and associated behaviors and food intake.RESULTSWe found that Korean subjects tended to show stronger associations between solo-eating and negative emotions while the Japanese subjects expressed mixed emotions towards the practice of solo-eating. In the questionnaire, more Korean students reported they prefer commensality and tend to eat more quantities when they eat commensally. In contrast, more Japanese reported that they do not have preference on commensality and there is no notable difference in food quantities when they eat commensally and alone. Compared to the general Korean cohort finding, more proportion of overweight and obese groups of Korean subjects reported that they tend to eat more when they are alone than normal and underweight groups. This difference was not found in the overweight Japanese subjects.CONCLUSIONOur study revealed cross-cultural variations of perceptions and practices of commensality and solo-eating in a non-western setting.

Comparing commensality: Festive eating occasions among French, German and Spanish young adults

This essay explores festive eating occasions among French, German and Spanish young adults. It draws from in-depth interviews with 83 young adults of these three nationalities living in one of these countries, as well as participant, direct and ‘floating’ observation of their eating events in Lyon, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, and Madrid. The paper sheds light on commonalities and differences between their festive forms of commensality in relationship with their position in the life course, their generation, nationality, and the local contexts in which their practices, and more broadly, their lives take place. Festive commensality in the framework of cross-cultural research emerges as a key and critical notion for comparing eating arrangements and systems. The focus on commensal practices of a specific and crucial age group has made it possible to take a life course perspective to cross-national research in this study, which opens up an interesting way of conveying dynamism in comparison of food-related practices.

Defining and Transgressing the Boundaries between Ritual Commensality and Daily Commensal Practices: the Case of Late Bronze Age Tall Bazi

Ritual commensality is a well documented social practice in texts and visual arts of the Ancient Near East. However, no information about daily commensality can be derived from these sources .The mere fact that a daily procedure as simple as eating and drinking was depicted hints at the meaning of this scene as a social event with a high symbolic value, while ordinary daily meals never seem to be represented. This paper argues that in everyday life, the boundaries between ritual and daily commensality were often floating. In order to acquire information on daily commensal practice and on the differences to ritual commensality, the architectonic and the more unspectacular archaeological remains at the Mesopotamian site of Tall Bazi are investigated. Near Eastern Archaeology; Commensality; Temple; House; Tall Bazi; Syria; Beer; Ritual

Charles Piot. Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 200 pp. Photographs. Notes. Bibiography. Index. $60.00. Cloth. $20.00. Paper.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY Charles Piot. Nostalgia for the Future: West Af rica after the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 200 pp. Photographs. Notes. Bibiography. Index. $60.00. Cloth. $20.00. Paper. Charles Piot's landmark 1999 ethnography, Remotely Global, showed that societies of the savanna region of northern Togo, far from being static, insular polities on the margins of the nation-state, lying history and isolated from global forces, have always been influenced and preoccupied by the outside world. In this new book, Piot argues that the ending of the Cold War brought about a decrease in the power of both the state and local chieftaincy in Togo, the emergence of a radically new political economy centered on NGOs and Pentecostal churches, and new, future-oriented social imaginaries, modes of subjectivity, sovereignty, and storytelling. Piot's tide indexes Togolese longing for a future that replaces untoward pasts, both political and cultural. Such longing is represented not only in Christian End Times narratives and die universal quest for exit visas but also in the embrace of a thousand development initiatives that hail youth and leave elders behind (20). Utopian yearnings find expression in a passion for playing the green card lottery, fantasies of fictitious marriages with foreigners, membership in churches that promise supernatural abundance, Internet searches for exit strategies, and a turn to the transient pleasures of sex, drugs, and music for an instantaneous sense of affective power and presence. This emphasis on inwardness and self-fulfillment stands in dramatic contrast to the prevailing ethos of a traditional culture, where duty, forebearance, and respect for elders imply a stoic acceptance of life as one finds it and the suppression of thoughts and feelings that challenge the status quo. Traditionally, lip service was paid to the idea that one must sacrifice personal gratification and spontaneous self-expression to make sociality viable (the implication being that what is good for the many will prove good for die individual). Collective rituals and everyday practices of commensality, neighborliness, and mutuality reinforced the common weal. Modernity reverses these assumptions. Personal development through education, travel, and purchasing power becomes the royal road to social development, a precondition for the wider social good. This revolutionary change in worldview does not occur adventitiously. It follows radical disruptions to the social fabric - civil war, famine, epidemic illness, mass migration or displacement, and urbanization. Piot paints a grim picture of the anomic background against which the new social imaginarles emerged in the 1990s. These changes burst onto this socio-cosmological stage like a comet from the sky. Disconcerted by the violence against Kabre in the cities of the south, puzzled by those strange new keywords democratie and droits de l'homme, attacked by the Pentecostal churches, stung by currency devaluation and state withdrawal, and increasingly neglected by cash-strapped diasporics, this authority system was shaken to its roots (99). …

“Isto é o Meu Corpo”: Rituais de Alimentação e Interação Social no Cristianismo Primitivo

The practices of commensality are present in diverse religions, organize rituals and define systems of belonging. In Christianity, commensality serves to structure faith. In the Eucharist primitive Christianity communities, in shared solidarity, had the opportunity to experience one dignified meal per week. This principle of sharing referred to the practice of Jesus and extended itself to other meals of the community, providing welcome and sustenance to itinerant preachers and the poor.

Poder y prestigio en las sociedades de la cultura de El Argar. El consumo comunal de bóvidos y ovicápridos en los rituales de enterramiento

The regular appearance of meat offerings in Argaric pmbs enables us to point out that the slaughter and consumption of cattle and sheep or goat took place as a part of rituals of commensality. A portion of meat of theses animals, always belonging to a leg, was introduced as grave goods involving the symbolic performance of the death in the ritual itself. The type of meat consumed in these rituals was linked to the social status of Argaric people. Cattle would be slaughtered during the commensal practices associated with the highest social groups in contrast to the performance developed in the lowest social levels that include goat or sheep but never cattle. The ritual of commensality in Argaric societies would contribute to maintaining the social solidarity at the same time that it legitimated and naturalised a clear situation of social asymmetry. Cohesion and social distance play an important role in the commensal practices of Argaric funerary rituals.

Ritual funerario y comensalidad en las sociedades de la Edad del Bronce del Sureste Peninsular: la Cultura de el Argar

In this paper we will explore the relationship between commensality and the funerary ritual of the Argaric culture. Evidences of feasting can be related to two main archaeological domains; firstly, the production of special ritual pottery vessels with a high degree of standardization linked to the presentation and consumption of food and drink. In these vessels the visual and display properties have been clearly emphasised, which probably means their performance in social practises based on display and dramatization. Secondly, the appearance of faunal remains, as part of the funerary ritual, implies the slaughter of cattle and ovicaprids mainly in young ages, the ideal moment to be consumed. The eating of these species would be part of ritual feasting, with the exception of the legs of these animals that were introduced in the burial as grave goods. The clearly differential social access to these commensal practices would involve not only the construction of a strong sense of community but principally the naturalization of unequal social relationship.

Reconfiguring Relatedness in Anorexia

Anthropological concepts of relatedness have not been addressed in any of the writings on anorexia, despite the literature being replete with negative connotations of sociality such as withdrawal, regression, and toxic families (in the form of ‘obsessive mothers’ or ‘absent fathers’). As a departure to the vast literature on this topic, this multi-sited ethnographic project draws on the recent critiques and broadening of the concept of kinship to examine the ways in which a group of people with a diagnosis of anorexia understood and experienced relatedness in their everyday lives, that is, how they continually transformed connections by truncating, creating, sustaining and abandoning them. Those practices that are taken for granted as creating and sustaining relatedness—from the everyday practices of commensality to the capacity to have children—were consistently negated. Negating consensual avenues of relatedness did not leave these people in a void. On the contrary, new and productive meanings and experiences of being related were created and people entered into a relationship with anorexia that, in turn, tempered their relationships with their everyday worlds. In examining the ‘relational matrix’ of anorexia, new spaces of agency, ambiguity and power are illuminated.