Dr Paul Hewer of the Department of
Marketing recently had a chapter published, titled “Fraught contexts and
mediated culinary practices: Ontological practices and politics” in the book
‘The Practice of the Meal’ edited by Benedetta Cappellini, David Marshall and
Elizabeth Parsons (Routledge).
The book is a wide-ranging collection which will be of great interest to a wide range of scholars interested in marketing, consumer behaviour and food studies, as well as the sociology of both families and food. Papers unpack the meal as a set of practices - acquisition, appropriation, appreciation and disposal – and show the role of the market in such processes by looking at how consumers make sense of marketplace discourses, whether this is how brand discourses influence shopping habits, or how consumers interact with the various spaces of the market. Revealing food consumption through both material and symbolic aspects, and the role that marketplace institutions, discourses and places play in shaping, perpetuating or transforming them, this holistic approach reveals how consumer practices of ‘the meal’, and the attendant meaning-making processes which surround them, are shaped.
The book is endorsed by Professor of Anthropology Richard Wilk (Indians University, USA): 'This is by far the most creative and innovative group of papers on food I have read in many years. The authors mount a cohesive expedition into the terra incognita of the everyday meal, discovering and exploring important rich veins of consumer culture which have been hitherto neglected. Using advanced theoretical tools, they take us far beyond the comfortable fiction of the happy family dinner.'
Dr Hewer’s own chapter in the book explores the celebrity brand of Jamie Oliver and its forms of popular appeal.