The Practice of the Meal ─ Food, Families and the Market Place

Reflecting a growing interest in consumption practices, and particularly relating to food, this cross disciplinary volume brings together diverse perspectives on our (often taken for granted) domestic mealtimes.

By unpacking the meal as a set of practices - acquisition, appropriation, appreciation and disposal - it shows 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.

This wide-ranging collection 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.

Benedetta Cappellini is a lecturer in Marketing at the Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research interests are in food consumption, material culture and family consumption. She has published in Journal of Business Research, The Sociological Review, Consumption, Markets and Culture, Journal of Consumer Behaviour and Advances in Consumer Research. Her teaching interests are in consumer behaviour and marketing communication.

David Marshall is Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at the University of Edinburgh Business School. His primary research interests include research on food access and availability; consumer food choice and eating rituals; and children’s discretionary consumption in relation to food advertising and marketing. He edited Understanding Children as Consumers (2010) and Food Choice and the Consumer (1995) and has published in a number of academic journals including The Sociological Review, Journal of Marketing Management, Consumption, Markets and Culture, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, International Journal of Advertising and Marketing to Children (Young Consumers), Appetite, Food Quality and Preference, International Journal of Epidemiology, Journal of Human Nutrition.

Elizabeth Parsons is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include: consumer culture, critical marketing, and gender, identity and subjectivity at work. Recent co-edited texts include:Branded Lives: The Production and Consumption of Meaning at Work (Edward Elgar) andKey Concepts in Critical Management Studies (Sage). She is also co-editor of the journalMarketing Theory.