Bittersweet: Living with sugar and kin in contemporary Scotland

苦乐参半：在当代苏格兰与糖和亲人一起生活

• 批准号: ES/Y01037X/1
• 负责人: Imogen Bevan
• 金额: $ 13.72万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FY01037X%2F1
• 关键词: Bittersweet; Living; sugar; kin; contemporary

My PhD thesis showed that sugar is central to people's social relationships and sense of place, and can be reconceptualised as a substance of kinship and relatedness (Carsten 1995, 2019; Strathern 1988), changing our understandings of what it means to be related in contemporary Scotland. At a time when sugar has become the object of media attention and vitriol, and in a setting where national identities are entangled with stereotypes of 'infamous' eating practices and high rates of obesity (Knight, 2016), sugar consumption practices offer a unique window onto tensions around eating, parenthood and moral responsibilities for health.Rather than taking an approach that seeks to identify barriers to healthy eating, my doctoral work offers insights into why and how people consume sugar, and in doing so shows how people balance ideas about health with other kinds of priorities and responsibilities. During a 13-month ethnography in an Edinburgh neighbourhood, I carried out participant observation in the classrooms, dining halls and playgrounds of two primary schools. I accompanied different families through several areas of their everyday lives (home, school, medical spaces, sites of consumption and leisure), and complemented this with in-depth interviews with parents, teachers and head teachers. This ethnographic and relational approach allowed me to form a detailed picture of their patterns of consumption, relationship dynamics and concerns.Bringing together theories of consumption, kinship, health, pleasure and ethics, my PhD research reveals the ethical problems that sugar consumption poses to individuals and institutions, and sugar's role in marking out relationships as close or distant, authoritative or permissive, and spaces as public or private. A key finding from my research is that sugar is marked out as by educational and medical institutions as bad - for individual health and bodies. Yet sugar is also marked out as good - for social bonding, for indexing intimacy, for recognition, compensation, and for marking out the meanings of particular times, spaces, types of relationship, and the kind of authority that infuses them. I developed the concept of 'living with sugar' to describe how people negotiate the structural over-availability of sugar, the social and commercial pressures to consume sugar, the links between sugar and place, and the everyday ethics involved in balancing health and pleasure. In doing so I make significant theoretical contributions to wider debates beyond the anthropology of Britain, to current theories of kinship, exchange, 'ordinary' ethics, and pleasure.My work has significance for policymakers, schools, parents and the wider public. In the context of a cost of living crisis, it is more pressing than ever to disseminate the findings from this study. The fellowship would help me develop my publication record and academic profile, build networks in Geography - bridging gaps between the Cultural and Historical Geography, and Population Health and Place groups at Edinburgh - and other research groups (e.g. FRiED), and create impact opportunities. As one of the UK's emerging hubs for food studies, Edinburgh is an obvious choice, and will allow me to pursue my work with FRiED, who have been instrumental in advising on the Scottish Government's 'Good Food Nation' approach. Moreover, moving to Geography will enable me to expand my analytical toolbox by engaging with geographical approaches to everyday consumption. This will allow me to develop notions of place and spatial patterns of consumption ethnographically present, yet undertheorized in my PhD, and to develop an interdisciplinary approach and networks. A stronger focus on place and space will benefit my work, enabling a deeper analysis of people's experiences of class and spatial inequalities through the lens of consumption.

我的博士论文表明，糖是人们社会关系和地方感的核心，可以被重新概念化为亲属关系和亲属关系的物质(卡斯滕1995,2019；斯特拉森1988)，改变了我们对当代苏格兰亲属关系意味着什么的理解。在糖已经成为媒体关注和尖酸刻薄的对象的时候，在一个国家身份与臭名昭著的饮食习惯和高肥胖率的刻板印象纠缠在一起的背景下(奈特，2016)，糖消费实践为人们提供了一个独特的窗口，让人们了解围绕饮食、为人父母和对健康的道德责任的紧张局势。我的博士工作没有采取一种试图找出健康饮食障碍的方法，而是提供了对人们为什么以及如何消费糖的见解，并在这样做的过程中展示了人们如何平衡关于健康的想法与其他类型的优先事项和责任。在爱丁堡的一个社区进行了为期13个月的民族志调查期间，我在两所小学的教室、食堂和操场进行了参与性观察。我陪同不同的家庭走过了他们日常生活的几个领域(家庭、学校、医疗空间、消费和休闲场所)，并与家长、老师和校长进行了深入的访谈。这种人种学和关系学的方法让我对他们的消费模式、关系动态和担忧形成了一幅详细的图景。我的博士研究结合了消费、亲属关系、健康、快乐和伦理的理论，揭示了糖消费给个人和机构带来的伦理问题，以及糖在区分关系是亲密还是遥远、权威还是允许、以及空间是公共还是私人方面所起的作用。我的研究的一个关键发现是，糖被教育和医疗机构标榜为有害--对个人健康和身体有害。然而，糖也被标记为有益的--有助于社会纽带、亲密关系的索引、认可、补偿，以及标记出特定时间、空间、关系类型以及注入它们的那种权威的意义。我提出了“与糖共处”的概念，用来描述人们如何应对糖的结构性过剩、社会和商业对糖的消费压力、糖和食物之间的联系，以及平衡健康和快乐的日常道德规范。通过这样做，我在英国人类学之外的更广泛的辩论中做出了重大的理论贡献，对当前关于亲属关系、交换、“普通”伦理和快乐的理论做出了重大贡献。我的工作对政策制定者、学校、家长和更广泛的公众具有重要意义。在生活成本危机的背景下，传播这项研究的结果比以往任何时候都更加紧迫。该奖学金将帮助我发展我的出版记录和学术档案，在地理学--弥合爱丁堡文化和历史地理学、人口健康和地方小组--和其他研究小组(如FRED)之间的差距--建立网络，并创造产生影响的机会。作为英国新兴的食品研究中心之一，爱丁堡是一个显而易见的选择，这将使我能够继续与弗里德一起工作，他们在苏格兰政府的“美食之国”方法方面发挥了重要作用。此外，转到地理学将使我能够通过接触日常消费的地理方法来扩展我的分析工具箱。这将使我能够以民族志的方式发展消费的地点和空间模式的概念，但在我的博士学位中却没有得到充分的理论支持，并开发了一种跨学科的方法和网络。对场所和空间的更强关注将有利于我的工作，使我能够通过消费的视角更深入地分析人们对阶级和空间不平等的体验。