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Social Science Information 50(3–4) 528 –548 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and

Social Science Information 50(3–4) 528 –548 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0539018411413963 ssi.sagepub.com Commensality, society and culture Claude Fischler CNRS & EHESS, Paris Abstract The founding fathers of the social sciences recognized commensality as a major issue but considered it mostly in a religious, sacrificial, ritualistic context. The notion of commensality is examined in its various dimensions and operations. Empirical data are used to examine cultural variability in attitudes about food, commensality and its correlates among countries usually categorized as ‘Western’ and ‘modern’. Clear-cut differences are identified, hinting at possible relationships between, on the one hand, cultural attachment to commensality and, on the other hand, a lower prevalence of obesity and associated health problems involving nutrition. Keywords altruism, commensality, cooperation, cross-cultural comparison, food patterns, food sharing, meals, meal patterns, nutrition, obesity, reciprocity, sociability, social relationships, socialization Résumé Les pères fondateurs des sciences humaines ont identifié la commensalité comme une question fondamentale mais l’ont envisagée essentiellement sous l’angle religieux, sacrificiel et rituel. La notion de commensalité est envisagée dans ses diverses dimensions et fonctionnements. En utilisant des données empiriques, on examine ensuite la variabilité culturelle dans les attitudes à l’égard de la commensalité et de ses corrélats en particulier dans des pays habituellement qualifiés de ‘modernes’ et ‘occidentaux’. On trouve d’importantes différences transculturelles et les indices d’une relation possible entre, d’une part, un attachement culturel à la commensalité et, de l’autre, une prévalence plutôt plus faible de l’obésité et des pathologies liées à la nutrition. Corresponding author: Claude Fischler, Centre Edgar Morin (IIAC, CNRS-EHESS), 22 rue d’Athènes, 75009 Paris, France Email: fischler@ehess.fr II The human and social sciences and the challenge of the future at PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE CHILE on March 8, 2016 ssi.sagepub.com Downloaded from Fischler 529 Mots-clés altruisme, approche comparative, commensalité, comparaison interculturelle, coopération, nutrition, obésité, partage, réciprocité, relations sociales, repas, rythme des repas, rythmes alimentaires, sociabilité, socialisation One of the most striking manifestations of human sociality is commensality: humans tend to eat together or, to put it more exactly, to eat in groups. Commensality, in its literal sense, means eating at the same table (mensa). A wider, simple definition pro poses that ‘commensality is eating with other people’ (Sobal & Nelson, 2003). In a 1992 trend report on the emerging sociology of food, three distinguished scholars in the field (Mennell, Murcott & van Otterloo, 1992) remarked in conclusion of their work that ‘it is a commonplace of discussions of food and society to speak of the social importance of commensality’. Twenty-odd years later, one would agree with the statement but remark that, by and large, in spite of a growing number of observations and analyses and some very significant contributions, the topic still needs more investigation and a unifying perspective. One of the most striking issues raised, particularly in the 1992 trend report’s conclu sion, was that of changes in eating patterns and commensality: Though incompletely investigated, it is highly likely that the meals that are held to be the very stuff of sociality are in danger of disappearing … part and parcel of the trends characterised earlier in this report as increasing tendencies towards individualisation. (Mennell, Murcott & van Otterloo, 1992: 116) The authors cite as examples of this trend ‘a reduction from five meals a day to three in Vienna since the turn of the century and a reorganization of their type’; an ‘increased likelihood of solo-eating’; all a consequence of ‘the major reorganization of industrial life’. But they go on, expressing their scepticism about worries about the ‘decline of the family meal’, which look as if they were also signaling worries about the ‘decline of the family’ and even about the notion of commensality itself. They call the thought ‘perilous’, since, while commensality bonds participants, it also excludes outsiders. Whether a loos ening of social bonding is occurring as a consequence of the common meal giving way is a recurring question. Although it may look empirically resolvable, it has led to constant debate and suspicion – sometimes well founded – of an ideological or moral bias. The reason is probably that the deepest issues at stake are of essential social significance and carry fundamentally moral undertones. After all, the sharing of food involves the very structure of social organization, no less than the division and allocation of resources. In today’s world the issues raised in the 1992 trend report have gained in acuteness and, in developed as well as in emerging countries, they take on the appearance of a crisis: the question is repeatedly asked whether commensality really is on the decline and, if so, what the connection is with, among other problems involving public health, obesity and associated pathologies. In this article, I discuss first how the social sciences have tackled the issue of com mensality. I then move on to examine the notion itself and what features it covers. In a at PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE CHILE on March 8, 2016 ssi.sagepub.com Downloaded from 530 Social Science Information 50(3–4) third part, I use empirical data to demonstrate strong cultural variability in attitudes about food, eating, health and commensality between countries usually categorized as ‘Western’ and ‘modern’, hinting at possible relationships between, on the one hand, cultural attach ment to commensality and, on the other hand, a lower prevalence of obesity and associ ated health problems involving nutrition. Transcending biology: The social sciences and commensality Eating is often, and of course rightly, described as the primary biological function. It could also be characterized as the primary social function, however, since cooperation in food procurement is essential to social organization and implies, in turn, reciprocity and redistribution. As ethnographic literature shows, hunter-gatherer groups dispatch resources extracted from the environment, particularly animal flesh, beyond the imme diate circle of the hunters and their kin, in accordance with often complex, both explicit and implicit rules (Bahuchet, 1990; Marshall, 1961). Some of the founding fathers of anthropology and sociology – Robertson Smith, Emile Durkheim and of course Marcel Mauss – did address food and eating as fundamental social issues, albeit mostly from a specific point of view: in 1932, the British anthropolo gist Audrey Richards criticized them for having dealt mostly with the religious, ritualistic and sacrificial aspects of eating, overlooking the fundamental dimension of everyday nourishment (and failing, she added, to care much about collecting data): It is for want of this concrete data that Durkheim and his followers of the French sociological school have given a misleading account of this question. Like Robertson Smith, they have emphasized that eating is a social activity, rather than an individual physiological process, but in their hands this sociological aspect of nutrition has developed into a positive apotheosis of the ceremonial meal. The ritual sharing of food is, to them, not the act of a specific unit of the tribe, whether of family, age group, or village, but a kind of mystic and religious communion of the society at large … (Richards, 2004 [1932]: 180) The criticism is probably not without merit. To Durkheim, daily eating fails the test for being recognized as a ‘social fact’. It is, as it were, too basically biological: Every individual drinks, sleeps, eats, reasons and it is in society’s best interest that such functions are exerted in a regular way. If these facts were social, sociology could claim no specific object; its domain and those of biology and psychology would overlap. (Durkheim, 1981 [1894]): 3; my translation) In his view of food, Durkheim seems to be in line with the archetypal view of eating as the lowliest, most basic, biological function involving bodily aspects of the human condi tion. This notion of the primitive, biological nature of eating, as opposed to the immaterial and the spiritual, permeates Western thinking, particularly religious – as well as that of many other cultures and religions. It is expressed best and earliest in the biblical phrase ‘Man does not live by bread alone’ (Deuteronomy 8: 3; Matthew 4: 4) and in the implicit at PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE CHILE on March 8, 2016 ssi.sagepub.com Downloaded from Fischler 531 advice it provides: to pursue purposes higher than just fulfilling biological needs, i.e. understanding and following God’s commandments. Such an endeavour seems to coin cide more often than not with controlling one’s mundane, bodily appetites. Frugality and fast have literally elevating properties in many or most cultures and religions. They bring fleshly creatures closer to spirituality; closer, as it were, to their creator. But an alternative or a complement is available to whoever is not necessarily devoted to attaining sainthood. While eating in moderation is advised by religions (as well as by physicians), what contributes decisively to transmuting eating into an activity of a higher spiritual essence is sharing. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, downplaying food against company,1 puts it this way: ‘one must be careful not so much of what one eats as with whom one eats. There is no dish so sweet to me, and no sauce so appetizing as the pleasure uploads/Sante/ fischler-commensality-society-and-culture 1 .pdf