This book brings together recent UK studies into children’s experiences and practices around food in a range of contexts, linking these to current policy and practice perspectives. It reveals that food works not only on a material level as sustenance but also on a symbolic level as something that can stand for thoughts, feelings, and relationships. The three broad contexts of schools, families and care (residential homes and foster care) are explored to show the ways in which both children and adults use food. Food is used as a means by which adults care for children and is also something through which adults manage their own feelings and relationships to each other which in turn impact on children’s experiences.
The book examines the power of food in our daily lives and the way in which it can be used as a medium by individuals to exert power and resistance, establish collective identities and notions of the self and to express moralities about notions of 'proper' family routines and 'good' and 'healthy' lifestyle choices. It identifies inter-generational and intra-generational differences and commonalities in regard to the uses of and experiences around food across a range of studies conducted with children and young people.
This book was published as a special issue of Children's Geographies.
Contents
1. Introduction: Children’s food practices in families and institutions Samantha Punch, Ian McIntosh and Ruth Emond – University of Stirling
Children, Food and Institutions
2. Food and its meaning for asylum seeking children and young people in foster care Ravi KS Kohli, Helen Connolly - University of Bedfordshire Andrea Warman - Who Cares? Trust
3. Children and food practices in residential care: ambivalence in the ‘institutional’ home Nika Dorrer, Ian McIntosh, Samantha Punch and Ruth Emond – University of Stirling
4. Discussant piece: Linking, bridging and bohe importance of a psycho-social perspective for Children in Public Care Jonathan Stanley - National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care, National Children’s Bureau
Children, Food and Schools
5. School lunches: children’s services or children’s spaces? Paul Daniel and Ulla Gustafsson - Roehampton University
6. ‘I don’t have to listen to you! You’re just a dinner lady!’: power and resistance at lunchtimes in primary schools Jo Pike - University of Hull
7. Discussant piece: Food and schools Ian McIntosh, Ruth Emond and Samantha Punch – University of Stirling
Children, Food and Families
8. Children’s snacking, children’s food: food moralities and family life Penny Curtis, Allison James and Katie Ellis - University of Sheffield
9. Food and family practices: teenagers, eating and domestic life in differing socio-economic circumstances Kathryn Backett-Milburn - The University ...
