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Synopsis
This book takes a fragment of social life – dining out in restaurants – and uses it to examine the nature and meaning of manners and social relations in the modern world.
It is necessary to eat to maintain the body, but eating out transforms this act into a public event full of social significances. Dining out is a performance, a highly mananered and stylised event subject to bourgeois fashions and patterns of conspicuous consumption. How has the pursuit of private pleasure become part of the public arena? Why is dining out so popular today? How does the individual decide that dining out is a pleasure, that it will satisfy his or her desires and that it is a past–time worth pursuing?
In order to answer these questions, Finkelstein retraces the social history of the restaurant and examines the different types of restaurant which are prevalent today. Drawing on the seminal work of Norbert Elias, she focusses on the nature and development of manners and their relation to customs, fashions and the formation of personal identity. She argues that the modern habit of dining out demonstrates a lack of civility in modern social relations: consumer culture, with its conspicuous consumption, has encouraged te development of a social milieu in which interpersonal exchanges are commodified.
This highly original work will be of particular interest to students of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, as well as to historians interested in the development of cultural forms.
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From the Back Cover
This book takes a fragment of social life – dining out in restaurants – and uses it to examine the nature and meaning of manners and social relations in the modern world.
It is necessary to eat to maintain the body, but eating out transforms this act into a public event full of social significances. Dining out is a performance, a highly mananered and stylised event subject to bourgeois fashions and patterns of conspicuous consumption. How has the pursuit of private pleasure become part of the public arena? Why is dining out so popular today? How does the individual decide that dining out is a pleasure, that it will satisfy his or her desires and that it is a past–time worth pursuing?
In order to answer these questions, Finkelstein retraces the social history of the restaurant and examines the different types of restaurant which are prevalent today. Drawing on the seminal work of Norbert Elias, she focusses on the nature and development of manners and their relation to customs, fashions and the formation of personal identity. She argues that the modern habit of dining out demonstrates a lack of civility in modern social relations: consumer culture, with its conspicuous consumption, has encouraged te development of a social milieu in which interpersonal exchanges are commodified.
This highly original work will be of particular interest to students of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, as well as to historians interested in the development of cultural forms.
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Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners
Published by
Polity Press, 1989
ISBN 10: 0745606520
ISBN 13: 9780745606521
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Signed
Seller: masted books, Gilberton, SA, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Covers & Spine: both front and back boards are clean and flat with minimal wear at the edges and corners, spine is intact and solid with only minor bumping at ends. Binding: firm throughout. Pages & Markings: unstained, no markings. Dust Jacket: undamaged with only slight scuffing on surface and edges. All items are protectively packaged, and a postal tracking number will be sent to all customers whose current email address is registered with AbeBooks. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 001416
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