Drawing on Weber’s rationalisation theory and feminist critiques of the consumption-production literature, this thesis describes the impacts and changes in dietary practices that have occurred in households as a result of limited or constrained time available for family food provisioning, and how these changes can be understood as a product of contemporary Australian policy, cultural and food landscapes. It adopts feminist ethnography and household food strategies as important methodological innovations to forge a culturally informed account of convenience-orientated dietary practices in family households within contemporary Australian society. The data were collected from 15 Brisbane family households between January 2002 and August 2006. The thesis argues that dietary practices observed in ‘time-poor’ households have evolved as solutions to the problem of time scarcity by women whose role has traditionally been to feed families. The ‘solutions’ are shaped by the resources to which households have access, and ideas and traditions about family care, food and its responsibility, and available alternative options. Change is observed in diets, menus, source of prepared meals and prepared ingredients, but also organisation of food provisioning and distribution of workload. Also being reshaped is the role of food in the expression of cultural identity, commensality and, in the family setting, the transmission of food skills and knowledge. An analysis that critiques the usefulness of ‘speeding up’ domestic food provisioning as a viable and sustainable solution to the retention of the family meal is drawn, highlighting the problematic nature of persistent nostalgic interpretations of commensal eating patterns in culinary, food activism, sustainability and nutrition discourses. In the absence of a coherent moral philosophy for guiding current public health policy and practice, Kittay’s public ethic of care is proposed as a suitable model. A key challenge for future research is to ensure that household level sociocultural analysis continues to enrich broader debates in food policy and public health.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/254227 |
| Creators | Elizabeth Schubert |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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