2004 Annual Meeting - Abstract


CONSUMPTION, SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS AND INEQUALITIES:

KRAFT DINNER | DÎNER KRAFT IN QUÉBEC

Melanie Rock, MSW, PhD (Anthropology)
Assistant Professor

University of Calgary
Department of Community Health Sciences
Health Sciences Centre
3330 Hospital Drive NW
Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 4N1

tel -- 403.210.8585
fax -- 403.210.9747

mrock@ucalgary.ca

Influential contributions by anthropologists to socioeconomic theory have stressed that examining how certain things acquire veritable ‘social lives’ can yield crucial insights (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986). It has also been stressed that some things are more fruitful to study than others in a given cultural context (Miller 1998a; 1998b). Ethnographic studies of biomedicine have drawn upon the ‘social life of things’ research agenda, in analyzing such diverse phenomena as pharmaceuticals, organ transplants, gene-banking and the pharmacy business (Fleising 2001; Hogle 2000; Lock 2001; Pálsson and Harðardóttir 2002; Rock In press; Sharp 2000; van der Geest, et al. 1996). Greater integration between anthropological engagements with material culture and with embodiment may hold untapped potential for understanding inequality and curbing its consequences in contemporary North America. Hence this paper examines the status and impact in Québec society of a particular commodity: Kraft Dinner, also known as Dîner Kraft. More specifically, the paper examines mentions of Kraft Dinner and Dîner Kraft in French-language newspapers, from the mid-1980s on; the analysis was informed by Montréal-based field research centered on health and social inequality. Kraft Dinner|Dîner Kraft (a close relative of Kraft Mac and Cheese sold in the United States) is consumed by Québec residents of all ages, across the income spectrum, with little or extensive formal education, who speak English or French or both or neither, and who live in urban, surburban or rural areas. Unlike things such as old buildings and some other foods (Handler 1988), this commodity hardly qualifies as a proud symbol of Québec society and history. Yet, as this paper illustrates, the product has very different uses and connotations in these different groupings. Moreover, the mass consumption of Kraft Dinner|Dîner Kraft is instructive for understanding how and why average body weight is on the rise, and why this weight gain is increasingly concentrated in disadvantaged populations. Thus, in governments and corporations and courts of law, as well as in anthropology (Descola 1988), the tricky concept of causality takes on renewed practical and theoretical importance because to infer disease causation from consumption patterns is to raise questions about culpability.

Appadurai, Arjun
1986 Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai, ed. Pp. 3-63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Descola, Philippe
1988 L'explication causale. In Les Idées de l’anthropologie. P. Descola, G. Lenclud, C. Severi, and A.-C. Taylor, eds. Pp. 11-58. Paris: Armand Colin.
Fleising, Usher
2001 In search of genohype: A content analysis of biotechnology company documents. New Genetics and Society 20(3):239-254.
Handler, Richard
1988 Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Hogle, Linda
2000 Recovering the Nation's Body: Cultural Memory, Medicine, and the Politics of Redemption. New Brunswick, NJ and London, England: Rutgers University Press.
Kopytoff, Igor
1986 The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai, ed. Pp. 64-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lock, Margaret
2001 Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Miller, Daniel
1998a A Theory of Shopping. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
—
1998b Why some things matter. In Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. D. Miller, ed. Pp. 3-24. Consumption and space. London: University College London Press.
Mintz, Sidney
1985 Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking Press.
Pálsson, Gísli, and Kristín E. Harðardóttir
2002 For whom the cell tolls: Debates about biomedicine. Current Anthropology 43:271-301.
Rock, Melanie
In press Numbered days, valued lives: Statistics, shopping, pharmacy and the commodification of people. In Values and Valuables. C. Werner and D. Bell, eds. Research in Economic Anthropology Monograph Series, 23. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Sharp, Lesley
2000 The commodification of the body and its parts. Annual Review of Anthropology 29:287-328.
van der Geest, Sjaak, Susan Reynolds Whyte, and Anita Hardon
1996 The anthropology of pharmaceuticals: A biographical approach. Annual Review of Anthropology 25:153-178.