Bittersweet: Living with sugar and kin in contemporary Scotland

我的博士论文表明，糖是人们的社会关系和地方感的核心，并且可以被重新概念化为亲属关系和相关性的物质（Carsten 1995，2019; Strawberry 1988），改变了我们对当代苏格兰相关意义的理解。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时候，（Knight，2016），糖消费实践提供了一个独特的窗口，围绕饮食，父母和健康的道德责任的紧张关系.而不是采取一种方法，寻求确定健康饮食的障碍，我的博士研究为人们为什么以及如何消费糖提供了深刻的见解，并在这样做的过程中展示了人们如何平衡健康与其他类型的优先事项和责任。在为期13个月的民族志在爱丁堡附近，我进行了参与观察的教室，霍尔斯和操场上的两所小学。我陪同不同的家庭通过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，教师和校长进行深入访谈。这种人种学和关系学的方法使我能够详细了解他们的消费模式、关系动态和关注点。我的博士研究将消费、亲属关系、健康、快乐和道德理论结合在一起，揭示了糖消费对个人和机构造成的伦理问题，以及糖在区分亲密或疏远、权威或宽容关系中的作用，公共空间和私人空间。我的研究中的一个关键发现是，糖被教育和医疗机构标记为对个人健康和身体有害。然而，糖也被标记为好的--用于社会联系，用于索引亲密关系，用于识别，补偿，并用于标记特定时间、空间、关系类型的意义，以及注入它们的权威类型。我提出了“与糖共存”的概念，来描述人们如何应对糖的结构性过剩、消费糖的社会和商业压力、糖与地方之间的联系，以及平衡健康和快乐所涉及的日常道德。在这样做的过程中，我为英国人类学之外的更广泛的辩论做出了重大的理论贡献，对亲属关系，交换，“普通”道德和快乐的当前理论做出了重大的理论贡献。我的工作对政策制定者，学校，父母和更广泛的公众都有重要意义。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形象，建立地理网络-弥合文化和历史地理，人口健康和地方团体在爱丁堡之间的差距-和其他研究小组（例如FRIED），并创造影响的机会。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，并将允许我继续我的工作与FRiED，谁一直在苏格兰政府的“好食品国家”的方法提供咨询工具。此外，转向地理学将使我能够通过参与日常消费的地理方法来扩展我的分析工具箱。这将使我能够发展消费的地方和空间模式的概念，但在我的博士学位理论不足，并开发一个跨学科的方法和网络。对场所和空间的更强烈关注将有利于我的工作，使人们能够通过消费的透镜更深入地分析阶级和空间不平等的经历。

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.