From Culinary Taste: Consumer Behaviour in the International Restaurant Sector
Roy C. Wood
This chapter offers a sociological analysis of nouvelle cuisine. Nouvelle cuisine presents an interesting focus for the sociologist concerned with the relationship between food and culture. It has held culinary preeminence among certain sections of the middle class and is claimed by many commentators to have revolutionized the provision of French haute cuisine in the commercial hotel and catering industry.
Introduction
In recent years there has been a growth of academic sociological interest in the cultural significance of food and eating. Building on the early work of such pioneers of the field as L vi-Strauss (1966) and Mary Douglas (1975), much of this research has been directed towards the everyday meanings attached to food in (mainly) domestic settings (Murcott, 1983). While of value to both the general theorist curious to elaborate the symbolic significance of food and eating and the home economist/social nutritionist concerned with issues of family constitution, research to date has rarely taken as its focus the wider question of dining outside the home and is further limited by a characteristic focus on small samples of working-class subjects and everyday food.
There are, of course, exceptions to this general tendency, notably Mennell s (1985) seminal historical study of the comparative development of British and French cuisine, Driver s (1983) semi-academic account of British domestic and restaurant cuisine in the period from 1940 and Finkelstein s (1989) analysis of restaurant dining. However, on the whole dining outside the home has been ignored by sociologists of food...
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Topics of Interest
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