PhD defence: The Social Dynamics of Food Consumption – Exploring the Role of Values, Taste and Social Class

PhD defence

Naja Buono Stamer

Abstract

This PhD dissertation offers new empirically grounded insights into the social dynamics surrounding everyday food consumption. The aim is to investigate how three previously identified key elements – values, taste and social class – interact to explain food consumption. Drawing on quantitative data on Danish households’ actual food purchases, attitudes to food and their socio-economic resources, the analysis show that values and taste are important predictors of a range of everyday food consumption practices. However, values and taste alone cannot predict food consumption as they, together with their relationship to consumption, are grounded in structural logics that create differences between social classes. The dissertation thus concludes that to develop nuanced understandings of consumer behaviour we should investigate food consumption as pragmatic, moral practices that are socially and historically contingent.

Supervisors

Lotte Holm, Professor, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Thomas Bøker Lund, Assistant Professor, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Assesment Committee

Jesper Lassen, Professor, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Alan Warde, Professor, Sustainable Consumption Institute, The University of Manchester

Jakob Skjøtt-Larsen, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University

If you are interested in a full copy of the thesis, you can contact the PhD
student or one of the supervisors.