Dining Out: An Observation of Modern Manners - Hardcover

Finkelstein, Joanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081472597X ISBN 13: 9780814725979

Publisher: New York University Press, 1989

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.

About this title

Review

"[a] provocative and vigorously argued thesis . . . Finkelstein writes with much skill and subtlety . . ." Laurie Taylor, Times Literary Supplement.
"... a welcome addition to the small stock of existing sociological material in this area." Sociology

Synopsis

Discusses the social significance of dining out, explains why it has become so popular, and traces the history of the restaurant.

Edition details

• Publisher: New York University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081472597X
• ISBN 13: 9780814725979
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 199