Postemotional Food and Postemotional Foodways

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 13. Scenes, Taste, and Cultural Consumption

Abstract

The central argument of this paper is that modern society—and the modern food system by extension—can best be described as “postemotional.” Recent studies of the American food system focus on the food system as a capitalist enterprise, often invoking Marx or Marxist concepts, they criticize food companies as exploiting consumers, especially the poor, racial minorities, and female consumers. Such studies, while certainly informative, serve to further distort our picture of the modern food system as driven by exploitation of knowledge and skill. Drawing from Mestrovic’s Postemotional Society (1997), I wish to argue, “synthetic, quasi-emotions become the basis for widespread manipulation by self, others, and the culture industry as a whole” (p. xi). In extending Mestrovic’s thesis to the study of food, I seek to break the sociology of food from its modernist and postmodernist habits of mind, which have prevented it from adequately theorizing the problems faced by members of all social classes, racial groups, and genders. To better understand our present situation in capitalist American, this chapter begins with a recontextualization of Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with special attention directed to the role of emotions. I then move to discuss Eros as a force in the individual and within society through a comparative reading of Plato, Freud, Durkheim, and Mestrovic. Finally, I recontexualize Eros and its sickly modern relative, postemotional Eros, in the context of the 21st century American capitalism- specifically in the food businesses.

Author

• John Kainer, University of Texas-San Antonio