An insightful map of the landscape of social meals,Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequalityargues that the ways in which Americans eat together play a central role in social life in the United States. Delving into a wide range of research, Alice P. Julier analyzes etiquette and entertaining books from the past century and conducts interviews and observations of dozens of hosts and guests at dinner parties, potlucks, and buffets. She finds that when people invite friends, neighbors, or family members to share meals within their households, social inequalities involving race, economics, and gender reveal themselves in interesting ways: relationships are defined, boundaries of intimacy or distance are set, and people find themselves either excluded or included.
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ChoiceOutstanding Academic Title, 2014.
"I eagerly readEating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality, engulfing new insights offered in her cultural and sociological analysis of the significance of domestic hospitality in people's lives. An excellent, much needed contribution to food studies as well as sociology and gender studies."--Psyche A. Williams-Forson, author ofBuilding Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power
"It is well worth following Alice Julier on this journey and exploration of eating together through forms,ethosand places."--Review of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Studies
The author crafts a textured portrait of the meals and manners of middle-class dinner parties and potluck suppers, primary events in American social life.? Reveals both how notions of hospitality have changed, and the degree to which women are still charged with much of the labor of caring and sharing.? Highly recommended. --Choice
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Cosmopolitan dining habits have become a form of social capital, as Alice P. Julier argues inEating l#ã
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