Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Paradox, performance and food
T2 - managing difference in the construction of femininity
AU - Cronin, James
AU - McCarthy, Mary
AU - Newcombe, Mark
AU - McCarthy, Sinead
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - This paper explores the personal and interpersonal complexities of women’s’ food-related behaviours. Drawing from the postmodern concept of paradoxical juxtapositions, the authors examine women’s discourses around food, cooking and eating to discuss the embedded negotiations of tensions arising from maintaining hetero-normative femininities while accounting for their own personal and social subjectivities. Data were collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with 45 women. Moving across the analyses, identity complexity plays out for women through the simultaneous presence of strain and gratification in their performance as “caregivers” and an ongoing dialectic of ascetism/discipline and hedonism/transgression in their food-lives. We argue women work to construct desirable experiences and self-identifications from balancing an assemblage of constituent food behaviours across different settings. Our analysis highlights the continuing presence of postmodern paradox as an important theoretical consideration and contributes to our understanding of how femininity is skilfully performed through the management of difference.
AB - This paper explores the personal and interpersonal complexities of women’s’ food-related behaviours. Drawing from the postmodern concept of paradoxical juxtapositions, the authors examine women’s discourses around food, cooking and eating to discuss the embedded negotiations of tensions arising from maintaining hetero-normative femininities while accounting for their own personal and social subjectivities. Data were collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with 45 women. Moving across the analyses, identity complexity plays out for women through the simultaneous presence of strain and gratification in their performance as “caregivers” and an ongoing dialectic of ascetism/discipline and hedonism/transgression in their food-lives. We argue women work to construct desirable experiences and self-identifications from balancing an assemblage of constituent food behaviours across different settings. Our analysis highlights the continuing presence of postmodern paradox as an important theoretical consideration and contributes to our understanding of how femininity is skilfully performed through the management of difference.
KW - food
KW - gender
KW - everyday life
KW - paradoxical juxtapositions
KW - tension
KW - conflict
U2 - 10.1080/10253866.2013.872548
DO - 10.1080/10253866.2013.872548
M3 - Journal article
VL - 17
SP - 367
EP - 391
JO - Consumption, Markets and Culture
JF - Consumption, Markets and Culture
SN - 1025-3866
IS - 4
ER -