FÆLLESSPISNING MIDT I JYLLAND: Når det drejer sig mere om spisning og drikning end om mad og drikke

Abstract

Richard P. Jenkins: Sociability in Mid-

Jutland: When Eating and Drinking is the

Point, rather than Food and Drink

This paper is based upon nearly a year’s field

research in a town in mid-westem Jutland,

Denmark. Ethnographic data is presented

about the range of occasions for eating and

drinking which are available to its

inhabitants: eating at home, meetings, annual

general meetings, parties and celebrations,

and public eating on demand and at need.

The argument is made that the social

occasions of eating and drinking are more

significant than the food and drink itself.

This is related to a complex of cultural values

concemed with sociability, consensus,

mutuality, communality and apparent

equality, which finds its widest expression in

the Danish welfare State. Developing

changes in the structure of private life and

households - and in the values just itemised

- are related to changes in the organisation of

eating and drinking. A more general

argument is also offered, about the need to

re-orient the study of food and drink towards

a processual study of eating and drinking.