The Social Dynamics of Food Consumption: Exploring the Rule of Values, Taste and Social Class

Naja Buono Stamer

Abstract

This PhD dissertation offers new empirically grounded insights into the social dynamics surrounding everyday food consumption. The aim is to investigate how three previously identified key elements – values, taste and social class – interact to explain food consumption. Drawing on quantitative data on Danish households’ actual food purchases, attitudes to food and their socio-economic resources, the analysis show that values and taste are important predictors of a range of everyday food consumption practices. However, values and taste alone cannot predict food consumption as they, together with their relationship to consumption, are grounded in structural logics that create differences between social classes. The dissertation thus concludes that to develop nuanced understandings of consumer behaviour we should investigate food consumption as pragmatic, moral practices that are socially and historically contingent.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDepartment of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
Number of pages194
Publication statusPublished - 2016

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