Commensality Defines As Fellowship At Table Sociology Essay

Commensality Defines As Fellowship At Table Sociology Essay Commensality is eating with other people, and commensal eating patterns reflect the social relationships of individuals (1). According to Mennell et al., (1992), the relationship between food, eating, and society will be discussed in a range of ways that include commensality. Until recently, sociologists expressed relatively little interest in what we eat, how we prepare and consume food, how we feel about it and why. Paradoxically, when the relationship between food, eating and society is discussed, this is often in functionalist terms of commensality, that is, the social significance of living and eating together that is thought to lie at the heart of our sociality. Yet, from time to time, changes take place in the way our structures and interactions are perceived and prioritised. In addition, when children opened their lunch boxes, they displayed some of the opportunities and constraints of familial food choices. In effect, home was made visible. The data also illustrated that womens position in the domestic division of labour was intimately linked to the distribution of food, including that consumed at school. In interviews, parents explained that their influence over what went into the box was mediated by several factors which, together, were described in terms of eating compromises or bargains. The combination of (predominantly) mothers ideas about what was nutritionally balanced with their positioning of a snack meal as a stop-gap to the main meal event in the evening, was mediated not only by childrens food preferences but also by what was affordable and practically stored in a lunch box. Most people get married or spend time living with a partner at some stage in their lives. But what effect does this change have, if any, on their eating habits? The transition from bachelor or spinster to young couple represents a major lifecourse change and this paper looks at the role that eating together plays in the lives of a group of young Scottish couples recently married or cohabiting with their partner. The key question here is what role do meals play in all of this and how are eating activities arranged in these households. In an attempt to move the debate on meals beyond the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“traditional family unità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  it considers what eating à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“properlyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  meant for these couples. The paper looks at the importance of the evening meal as a site for sociability in married and cohabiting couples and examines the process of social interaction, focusing on temporal and spatial aspects of eating together as a couple. It reports on what men an d women said in individual interviews and recorded in personal food diaries, contrasting this with their behaviour when they were living separately from their partners (1) A study explained usual meal partners in commensal units and frequency of eating with others in commensal circles among 663 adults responding to a mailed questionnaire in one community. Meal partner data revealed that most respondents ate alone at breakfast, alone or with co-workers at lunch, and with family members at dinner. Commensal frequency data revealed some eating at the homes of other family members, little eating at friends homes, and almost no eating at neighbors homes. Few demographic variations existed in commensal eating, except that unmarried individuals more often ate breakfast and dinner alone and more often ate with friends. These finding suggest that contemporary work-oriented society may lead people to eat alone during the day but share evening meals with family, and that people maintain commensal relationships primarily with family members rather than friends or neighbors. Peoples social worlds appear to be focused on the nuclear family, and family members are al so the people they usually eat with (2). According to findings from a qualitative study of views and understandings of dietary practices in middle class families. Thirty five parents/main food providers of boys and girls aged 13/14 years, living in Eastern Scotland, were interviewed about their and their teenagers everyday lives, food, health and family practices. One of our aims was to understand more about the social and cultural conditions which might be promoting more positive dietary health and physical well-being amongst middle class families. Most parents accounts appeared rooted in a taken-for-grantedness that family members enjoyed good health, lived in relatively secure and unthreatening environments regarding health and resources, and were able to lead active lives, which they valued. Although controlling teenagers eating practices was presented as an ongoing challenge, active supervision and surveillance of their diets was described, as was guiding tastes in the right direction. Parents described attempts to ach ieve family eating practices such as commensality, cooking from scratch, and encouraging a varied and nutritional adult diet and cosmopolitan tastes, though work and activities could compromise these. These middle class families might be characterized as having future oriented hierarchies of luxury and choice, in which controlling and moulding teenagers food practices and tastes was assigned a high priority (3). As well as, Murcott (1988) has pointed out, public and fictional allegiance to the importance of shared meals persists, along with anxiety about their supposed decline. Together, anxiety about what, how, and with whom we eat has surfaced in relation to the health and physical well-being of adults and children and in cultural concerns about the disintegration of family life and values(4). The above mentioned studies illustrate that commensality in school can and does show a variety of formations. This applies also to understandings about parental choice and influence. At Fieldgate School, family influences were revealed more directly because children brought to school visible aspects of their home life, albeit contained in a school lunch box. Such influences were reinforced and thwarted by a variety of other factors, including peer group influence, but overall, parental choice was considered paramount. It should be the responsibility of both home and school, both really. I mean we need food to grow so that should be an educational thing and also put into practice at home via the parents. Food needs to be taught properly. As well as, the experience of becoming the provider of their own food changes the students food behaviors and representations. Diet quality, patterns of commensality and social representations of food provide input for developing healthy diet care and health promotion (5). According to ALLEN et al., (1970) the strongest relations occurred among the nutrition factors and family commensality was the most influential. The degree of family commensality was related not only to increase in food likes and dietary adequacy but also to health and academic performance. Food likes and diet adequacy were both correlated with academic skills, work rating, expectation of success and college preparation. Conclusion: Sharing meals together, both in terms of common understandings about their construction and the social rules which govern behaviour, is thought to be the very essence of sociality. The individualisation of our eating habits, it is claimed, means that both meals, and by implication, critical aspects of our sociality are disappearing (Burnett, 1989). In response, education has been advocated as a mechanism to halt a trend which is thought to threaten our health, our family life, and our sense of social cohesion. Set at the interface between home and school, the above mentioned papers have explored commensality at home and school, and has considered the overlap between the two, using data which prioritise the views of parents and, to a lesser extent children, rather than the perspectives of educationalists, nutritionists, or teachers. Advocates of nutritional improvement in childrens diets have stressed the importance of a school meals service. The discussion of eating provision in scho ol highlights the complex issues underpinning this assertion, not only in terms of nutritional impact but also in relation to the sociality of eating and the cross-cutting effects of institutional practice, socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage (discussed also by Dobson et al., 1994), and cultural preference. As we discussed in the above sections, the strongest relations occurred among the nutrition factors and family commensality was the most influential. The degree of family commensality was related not only to increase in food likes and dietary adequacy but also to health and academic performance. Food likes and diet adequacy were both correlated with academic skills, work rating, expectation of success and college preparation. 1. Marshall DW, Anderson AS. Proper meals in transition: young married couples on the nature of eating together. Appetite2002 Dec;39(3):193-206. 2. Sobal J, Nelson MK. Commensal eating patterns: a community study. Appetite2003 Oct;41(2):181-90. 3. Backett-Milburn KC, Wills WJ, Roberts ML, Lawton J. Food, eating and taste: parents perspectives on the making of the middle class teenager. Soc Sci Med Oct;71(7):1316-23. 4. Murcott A. Sociological and social anthropological approaches to food and eating. World Rev Nutr Diet1988;55:1-40. 5. Alves HJ, Boog MC. [Food behavior in student residence halls: a setting for health promotion]. Rev Saude Publica2007 Apr;41(2):197-204.

Historical Remediation Essay -- Writing Technology Technological Paper

Historical Remediation The history of writing is filled with accounts of humans struggling with new forms of writing tools. With the development of new writing technologies, newer tools remodeled older forms of technology to create faster writing systems. Remediation has made huge impacts on the literary world over the past few generations by looking at the cultural rivalry between different technologies and the progression of those technologies. As the years pass, new inventions are continually created to help make the tools used for writing faster, convenient and more efficient at a lower cost. Pursuits for economical writing tools date to before 1000 BC when the Egyptians created a delicate, layered reed called papyrus, to write hieroglyphs. To make this fragile material, Egyptians had to cut and peel tall papyrus reeds creating â€Å"thin strips, which were laid on a flat, wet surface, first vertically and then horizontally†¦ the two layers bonded to form a sheet of papyrus, which was dried in the sun and polished smooth with ivory or shell† (â€Å"Scroll and Codex†). Due to the long process of producing papyrus, the cost of owning the tool was very expensive and only available to the wealthy. In addition to being expensive, papyrus was not a very time efficient tool. The process of making the material was a large factor, but also storing and durability were a problem. However, for those who could afford and store the difficult items, papyrus provided a way for oral communications to be written down. â€Å"Writing on papyrus remediated oral communication by involving the eye as well as the ear and so giving the words a different claim to reality† (Bolter 23). Finally, important decrees and information could be written ... ...will continue to write by hand when they need to, but primary use the computer for everyday use. As the people of the 15th century learned to deal with progress of mass production, people of the 21st century will learn with each new remediation, the writing tool only improves. Works Cited Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Ilan, Meir Bar. Parchment. 13 February 2003. < http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/parchmen.html >. â€Å"Scroll and Codex.† Encyclopedia Romana Online. Encyclopedia Romona. 2001-2002. 11 February 2003. . Tomlinson, Sue. History of Writing. 1998-1999. 9 February 2003. .

Proof That God Exists…

I will focus on the intention of proving that God exists. Some people believe that God is real and that He was the one who â€Å"created† the world and who put Christianity together. I personally believe that people who aren’t religious or do not believe in Jesus Christ or God aren’t really up to standards with how the world was created and who the Miracle Worker of it all is truly. I will express my own opinion of how God and Jesus exist and how the Big Bang theory is just made up by scientists. I will prove this in my conclusion. Main Part of My Essay Some people feel that there is definite proof for God’s existence due to: Personal Experience: For me, my personal experience is that, and this is true what I’m about to tell you, my dear mother passed on and that God and her are watching me and I feel like crying because I know that she is in my soul forever. This is personally directing towards my own life. Personal Miracles: For me, my personal miracle, I find quite funny. When I was little, when my mother was alive, I couldn’t zip up my coat. So I asked my mum if she could help me. She tried and she failed. I asked her, † Mummy, pray to God, he will help me zip up this coat,† and she said†OK. Please God; help Alice to zip up her little coat. † My mum tried again and it worked. My zip worked. I don’t know if it was the power of God that did it for me or that my mum is a really strong person. But this is my personal miracle and I believed it was God. Religious Miracles: A miracle is an event that appears to be unexplainable by the laws of nature. So it is held to be as a supernatural or ghostly feeling as an act of God. There are several views on religious miracles: 1. Many religious people see miracles as signs of Jesus Christ or God and those who experience miracles to be divine and are a favour of God. . Others believe that there’s a supernatural world and miracles happen through that. 3. Many others believe that a supernatural world and religious miracles are impossible and can’t be physically done through and think that miracles are just lies through the Big Bang Theory. Religious views on Conscience: Religious views of conscience usually see it as links to a moral in all humans, to divinity. The diverse features of religion may not necessarily be with experiential, emotive, spiritual or considerations about the origin and operation of the conscience and its religious views about it.

Personal Narrative A Native Speaker Of Chinese - 851 Words

As a native speaker of Chinese, I learned how to read and write Chinese when I was four. The first word I could recognize was my name. My grandfather told me how to write it correctly. He had a really beautiful handwriting, so I was impressed and picked up a pencil immediately. I just imitated what he did and drew what he had on the paper, which turned out to be very different from the original version and hard to recognize. I asked, â€Å"Why should I write my name?† He answered with smile, â€Å"You need to write down your name so that people can know you. † Therefore, I practiced a lot to write my name better. I wrote my name ten times everyday I came home from kindergarten. My efforts paid off, and I felt proud each time I wrote down my name. It was a magic process. The word I said now became a physically existing symbol. As I learned more in school, I knew how to write many characters, forming more kinds of words and sentences. They carry emotions and meanings. Peo ple use them to communicate with each other, as well as themselves. I can write to others to express my opinion, as well as record what I just felt for myself. When I was in middle school, we were required to read famous articles or novels and learned to write narrative and argumentative essays. Teachers always said, â€Å"You must read more to write better. † So I started to read more since I was confused with how to write at first, starting from my peers’ essays. There was a newspaper called Xiamen Evening Newspaper,Show MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan913 Words   |  4 Pagesby Amy Tan In the narrative essay, â€Å"Mother Tongue† by Amy Tan, the author sets out the story between her mother, whose English is her second language, and Tan herself can speak native English very well. The essay covers the tonal shift of Amy Tan s psychological change, from grudge to understanding. Although she begins the essay saying, I am not a scholar of English or literature. 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