Alan Warde

"Expressions of High Status: A Comparative Synthesis by Jean-Pascal Daloz (2022)" published on 26 Feb 2024 by Bristol University Press.

Aims: This paper examines the co-occurrence of drinking alcohol and eating in Great Britain. Applying a practice-theoretical framework, it attends primarily to the nature and characteristics of events – to social situations. It asks whether drinking events involving food are significantly different from those without, whether differences are the same at home as on commercial public premises, and whether differences are the same for men and women. The focus is especially on episodes of drinking with meals at home, an infrequently explored context for a substantial proportion of contemporary alcohol consumption. Data: Employing a secondary analysis of commercial data about the British population in 2016, we examine reports of 47,645 drinking events, on commercial premises and at other locations, to explore how eating food and consumption of alcoholic beverages affect one another. Three types of event are compared – drinking with meals, with snacks, and without any food. Variables describing situations include group size and composition, temporal and spatial parameters, beverages, purposes, and simultaneous activities. Basic sociodemographic characteristics of respondents are also examined, with a special focus on the effects of gender. Results: Behaviours differ between settings. The presence of food at a drinking episode is associated with different patterns of participation, orientations, and quantities and types of beverage consumed. Gender, age, and class differences are apparent. Conclusions: Patterns of alcohol consumption are significantly affected by the accompaniment of food. This is a much-neglected topic that would benefit from further comparative and time series studies to determine the consequences for behaviour and intervention.

Current levels of material consumption in the West are incompatible with environmental sustainability. Present strategies for achieving reduction are not sufficient for purpose. In an early critique of inadequate conceptions of consumer demand, Wilhite and Lutzenhiser (Advances in Consumer Research, 26, 281–287, 1999) examined the difference between base and peak loading as a mechanism responsible for immediate inefficiencies and escalating levels of production in energy systems. Their article introduced the term ‘just-in-case’ to identify a common rationalisation for the persistent tendency of individuals and organisations to hold or increase excess capacity. As a source of and justification for excess capacity, the proviso ‘just-in-case’ has wider relevance in debates about unsustainable levels of everyday consumption, regarding the determination of what might be too much, what too little and what just enough. Defining enough is an intellectual and political minefield, but at least we can identify mechanisms which tend to generate unfruitful excess. Just-in-case reasoning is itself one such mechanism. It is one surreptitious way to increase environmental load through the justification for ownership of un(der)utilised material resources. We reveal circumstances in which just-in-case provides a rationalisation for escalating production and overstocking and point to four ways of reducing the environmental impacts of particular goods. We demonstrate the entailment of problematic items within practices. We discuss the merits of alternatives to the private and exclusive ownership of under-utilised resources-intensive products, including sharing ownership and renting services. Finally, we review the opportunities afforded by digital technologies.

This paper examines continuity and change in the bases of recommendations about dishes to prepare and serve in the household in Britain between 1968 and 2016. Employing a content analysis of recipes in widely circulating women’s magazines, it compares a sample of recipes from 2015–16 with ones from 1968 and 1992 analyzed previously in. In this follow-up study, new data are collected, using the same coding frame, with findings interpreted through the same conceptual framework, to classify recommendations about domestic food preparation with reference to four “culinary antinomies” expressing symbolic, structural oppositions between (1) health and indulgence, (2) economy and extravagance, (3) convenience and care, and (4) novelty and tradition. The changing prevalence of these principles of recommendation is described. Discussion revolves around interpretation of the social significance of changing recommendations, modification of the conceptual framework, and methodological aspects of the measurement of social change.

This article discusses themes identified as aims and objectives of Consumption and Society, reflecting on connections between the journal’s two titular concepts. It contrasts two distinct definitions and understandings of consumption, as purchase via market exchange and as the use of goods and services. It argues that the latter provides a more suitable and comprehensive object for social scientific study. Briefly reviewing the legacy of the cultural turn, the article outlines socio-cultural approaches emphasising symbolic, material and practical culture, and identifies some common failings. It considers the role of consumption in domination and social hierarchy in the context of escalating material inequality. Revisiting the relation between consumption and economic production, it commends some recent advances in the analysis of commodification while proposing a more encompassing ‘modes of provision’ framework. In association with an extended concept of social embeddedness, this offers an avenue for understanding macro-social change and the effects of current and historic inequalities. The concept of ‘controversy’ is introduced to understand normative and institutional contexts of mobilisation for change arising from contestation over consumption. The article concludes with remarks about theory and the difference that definitions make, the value of the concept of social embeddedness, and the analytic space beyond culture and markets.