Exploring Food Representations and Educational Images in SR: The Example of Food

1. Media representations and ’educational images’ in the exploration of SR – the example of food Marie-Louise Stjerna, Stockholm University

2. Imperatives related to food and eating • we ’should’ eat healthy • norms of slimness influence the way we think we should eat • ’ethic eating’ (related to environmental issues and animal rights) • food ’should’ be beautiful and tasty

3. Qualitative interviews in two steps • fourteen men and women living in and/or working in Stockholm • first, using a topic guide to explore themes that have emerged as significant in earlier research • second, follow-up, using a series of pictures of meals from cookery books and dietary advice

4. Photoelicitation approach • In every picture there are ‘triggers’ in the choice of motive and the composition and a picture is not supposed to yield a certain reading • It is the reflexivity between image and verbalisation which produces data for the investigator

5. Pictures of meals as a stimuli in the interview situation • thirteen photographs from cookery books (both ‘festive’, ‘newer’ and ‘simpler’, more everyday meals) • two illustrations of dietary graphics in form of two plates – one for the omnivore and one for the vegetarian

6. Ways of talking about food and eating • categorise food into different sorts of foods • contrast one sort of food towards another food • associate the meal to different contexts • value the meal • position the meal

7. The importance of vegetables in a meal ‘I have become more and more like, for example, just eating meat and potatoes or meat and rice or something like that, I could eat that sort of food before and thought it was alright, also I think I’m brought up that way, you had salads at weekends. and it has changed, today a plate without vegetables is poor’

8. Food and lifestyles ‘at the time I thought we were pretty grown-up, because I thought it was quite adult-food, and then I felt a bit like, … I mean I didn’t like beetroots as a child, so when I ate this food, I felt very, yeah I felt grown-up and a bit posh, because I know it’s good food, and I like this, yes I felt a bit like a man of the world, like as if I knew’

9. Food and lifestyles ‘often in the market-hall, when I look at people, I fantasize, they’re sitting there and they, they are probably making careers, somewhere, they’re having their lunch break, but they are looking as people in control of their own time, and that’s also the impression you get, they are probably running their own businesses or being consultants’

10. The everyday versus the luxury ‘luxury could also be to devote yourself to… into food preparations and… actually for me luxury food is probably slow-food, I think, today. this feels more like Tuesday night, there isn’t anything on telly, the weekend is far away, messy at home (M laughs) we have to get something into our stomachs, (A laughs) glooms come thick and fast, but that s the way it feels like, despite of the fact I like sausage’

11. Food is more than just ‘food’ ‘it feels like Mediterranean and there’s a bowl with tomatoes and there is garlic up there and there is a bench, a bench of wood, a tablecloth, textiles in nice colours. it tells you, it is an Italian pizzeria, yeah here they are standing, the pizza-bakers and devoting themselves to the preparation of the food’

12. ‘You are told what to eat’ • Anna locates the picture to an ‘educational context’ • It’s circumscribing your eating – Anna comes to think of all things she is not ‘allowed’ to eat

13. ‘It’s for your own sake’ • Anna finds the vegetarian plate being more up to date – both more ‘modern’ and more ‘fun’ • The vegetarian plate only wants what’s best for you

14. Preliminary conclusions: central themes in the SR of what and how we ‘should’ eat • Ideas of health – the interviewees build on a norm of what they consider ‘healthy eating’, but the meaning of the categories healthy/unhealthy become more complex when related to different contexts or given a more subjective understanding • Ideas of time – in this study time is portrayed such as the pace of life, standing out as an important condition in urban culture affecting our relationship to food and eating

15. Preliminary conclusion: identity-forming character of food and eating • The different identity-position revealed in the material could be understood as a cultural repertoire, which people draw on and strive to or try to avoid in social life • The dynamic character character of notions of food and eating are being revealed as tensions between different identity-position • The communicative or argumentative character of notions of food and eating – one ‘has to’ argue for different positions

16. Preliminary conclusion: the photoelicitation approach • The interviewee is not only responding on the food/meal showed in the picture, but also stresses the presentation of the food/meal and reflects on the picture per se – it is revealed that food and eating are understood in the context of social life