![]() ![]() for the working class and poor), class-as-culture is given short shrift or, as Skeggs (2004) suggests, is constructed largely as lack. On the other hand, when class-as-structure poses the most constraints (i.e. Johnston and Baumann 2010): with money and time as relatively secure resources, food practices are understood as expressions of omnivorous, cosmopolitan tastes and the quest for distinction and authenticity. Consider the media representations of middle-class foodies (cf. On the one hand, when class-as-structure poses the least constraints, privilege is given to class-as-culture. That is, there is a dichotomous tendency in policy and populist accounts related to food and class. Nevertheless, these categories of classed resources-money and time taste-tend to be treated separately, with the former often assumed to be a condition for the exercise of the latter. Class thus shapes food practices through access to resources-not simply the resources of money and time to shop, prepare and eat in certain ways, but also the tastes or dispositions to do so in particular ways. The embodied collective habitus of social class gives rise to preferences, rituals and routines that bind food practices to identities, both individual and collective (Bourdieu 1984 Johnston et al. In contrast, social class is also understood as primary to the cultural context shaping food practices and preferences. However, the significance of class cannot be reduced to measures of economic capital or cost–benefit calculations. 2010 Gross and Rosenberger 2010 Hamelin et al. As a result, experiences of food insecurity become more likely for working-class and low-income families (e.g. Class-related impediments to the ease and stability of such access include economically constrained food budgets, and disadvantaged residential locations that lack adequate public transportation and/or food supply systems. Research has demonstrated how social class (in combination with gender, race/ethnicity and age, among other factors) acts as a structural determinant shaping access to food, and especially to food that is healthy, appealing and desired. ![]() Sociological and historical scholars have long noted the complex interrelationship between food practices and social class. Calling for the development of a more nuanced, dynamic account of the tastes and cultural competences of socially disadvantaged groups, the editorial concludes by underlining the simultaneous need for structural critiques of the gross inequalities in the degrees of freedom with which different individuals and groups engage in food practices. Thus, the Special Issue offers a debunking of the figure of the uncritical, uncultured low-income consumer. ![]() Through quantitative and qualitative cross-class comparisons, and ethnographic accounts of low-income experiences and practices, the papers examine the ways in which food practices and preferences are inflected by social class (alone, and in combination with gender, ethnicity and urban/rural location). ![]() The papers report on research carried out in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Denmark, and cover diverse contexts, from the intense insecurity of food deserts to the relative security of social democratic states. The papers call attention to the diverse, complex forms of critical creativity and cultural capital employed by individuals, families and communities across the spectrum of social stratification, in their attempts to acquire and prepare food that is both healthy and desirable. The Special Issue aims to move our understanding beyond this dichotomous divide, which privileges either middle-class discerning taste or working-class necessity in understandings of the determinants of food practices. This editorial introduces a Special Issue on food practices and social inequality by outlining a dichotomous tendency in policy-related, academic and populist accounts of the relationship between food and class. ![]()
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