| This dissertation seeks to analyze the ways in which French people create understandings of who they are, how their world is structured, and how they fit into that world -- all through the process of socializing seemingly routine everyday practices. Specifically, this study of a group of French 10-year-olds at school and at home, (situated in the context of practices and attitudes in their community, more generally) asks the central question of how children learn who they are through their food habits and analyzes the effects of perceptions of globalization on the transmission of food habits in a Loire Valley town. I use ethnographic fieldwork to investigate the ways in which people in "Loireville" imagine and manage change through this transmission process, and in my analysis I pay particular attention to the detailed practices of the child socialization processes. Overall, my data illuminate a particular constellation of practices and values that parents wish to instill in their children; mechanisms and structures for doing so; and, in the process, transmission patterns through which informants actively seek to identify and preserve something they consider "French" in response to perceived radical change. Chapter 1 situates my research theoretically in relation to the anthropology of food, forces of change and continuity, child socialization, and the literature related to education and taste in France, specifically. Chapter 2 discusses the setting, methodology, and relevant history and contemporary issues relating to food habits in France, and, especially, in the Loire Valley fieldwork site. Subsequent chapters focus on several topics that surfaced repeatedly in fieldwork and of which the importance became evident during analysis, namely: mealtime sociability (ch.3), classificatory schema of food-related knowledge (ch.4), food and place (ch.5), mass consumption and provisioning strategies (ch.6), and "taste," concentrating on l'apprentissage du gout, or the ways in which children become both tasters and judges of taste (ch.7). Finally, the conclusion provides an opportunity to meld the various highlights into a broader tableau, from which to better assess the data relative to the bigger picture of the contemporary foodscape, global consumption patterns, and sociocultural reproduction and transformation. |
