Food and food practices lend themselves to sociological and geographical analysis. In particular the study of the relationships that develop around and through food interactions and rituals can bri...

Children's food practices in families and institutions

A body of literature has increased our understanding of ethnic identity formation among ethnic minorities, but there remains a dearth of research focused on the ethnic identity formation of biethnic adolescents. Biethnic adolescents are likely to have unique experiences related to ethnicity that significantly alter the course of their ethnic identity formation. As such, a conceptual framework of biethnic identity is needed to guide future empirical work on biethnic identity and, ultimately, increase the field's understanding of this critical developmental process among biethnic adolescents. This article provides a review of theoretical and empirical work on ethnic identity among monoethnic adolescents, and, guided by the cultural ecological framework, an ecological framework of biethnic identity development is proposed.Key Words: adolescence, biethnic, cultural ecological theory, ethnic identity.Identity formation has been recognized as a central developmental task during adolescence (Erikson, 1968) and, more specifically, ethnic identity has been shown to be particularly salient for ethnic minority adolescents (Branch, 2001; Phinney & Alipuria, 1996). In fact, studies have demonstrated that ethnic identity is consistently associated with positive psychosocial outcomes such as higher self-esteem (Bracey, Bamaca, Se Umana-Taylor, 2004; Phinney, Cantu, & Kurtz, 1996) and lower depressive symptoms (Street, Harris-Britt, & Walker-Barnes, 2009; Umana-Taylor & Updegraff, 2007), and that ethnic identity can buffer the negative influence of cultural stressors on well-being (Iturbide, Raffaeli!, & Carlo, 2009; Umana-Taylor, Updegraff, & Gonzales-Backen, 201 1). A body of literature focused on ethnic identity has developed in recent years and has increased our understanding of ethnic identity formation among ethnic minorities (for a review, see Phinney & Ong, 2007), but researchers have neglected to examine ethnic identity formation beyond ethnic label preferences among adolescents who have parents from different ethnic backgrounds. Biethnic adolescents are likely to have unique experiences related to ethnicity that significantly alter the course of their ethnic identity formation as a result of their multiethnic, and thereby multicultural, family context and its interaction with individual-level characteristics and ecological contexts (e.g., socia! climate regarding ethnicity, peer influences, etc.). As such, a conceptual framework of biethnic identity is needed to guide future empirical work on biethnic identity and, ultimately, increase the field's understanding of this critical developmental process among biethnic adolescents. The following review will critically examine the existing theoretical and empirical work on ethnic identity among monoethnic adolescents within single-ethnic families as well as theory and research on biracial identity. Based on this literature and guided by the cultural ecological framework (Garcia Coll et al., 1996), recommendations for the study of biethnic identity are given.Before delving into a critical review of the ethnic identity literature and a presentation of a theoretical framework of biethnic identity formation, a few central concepts should be defined. First, I use the terms biethnic and monoethnic to refer to individuals having parents of different ethnic backgrounds and those with both parents of the same ethnic background, respectively. The current model is focused on the ethnic identity formation of biethnic adolescents who have a parent who is a member of the ethnic majority (e.g., Caucasian or White) and another parent who is of an ethnic minority background (e.g., Asian American, Latino, African American, etc.). The narrow focus on these biethnic individuals is warranted because of the unique ethnic experience of simultaneously being a member of the more powerful ethnic group (ethnic majority) and a member of a marginalized ethnic group (ethnic minority), both of which will contribute to adolescents* ethnic identity formation. …

An Application of Ecological Theory to Ethnic Identity Formation Among Biethnic Adolescents

Education about and for the home has been part of the Swedish education system for over one hundred years, and Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) has been compulsory for all pupils since the common nine-year school system was introduced in 1962. For all this time food has been a central theme, however we know very little of what food means in this context. The aim of this thesis was to seek to understand the construction of food in HCS. This thesis consists of four papers that explore food in HCS from the perspective of teachers and pupils, the role of the classroom and how food in HCS is part of a larger cultural context. Observations and focus group interviews were used to collect data. The material consists of field notes from 13 days in three HCS classrooms and transcripts of focus group interviews with 25 HCS-teachers and 20 pupils. The analytical methods used were based on social constructionist assumptions which were supplemented by theories on culture, space and spatiality. Results show that teachers constructed both pupils’ homes and society in general as deficient in relation to health. Their role, as public health commissioners, was to educate pupils about food on issues such as health and sustainability. Pupils relied on their personal experiences from home to make sense of food in HCS. To them, home was the authentic place for food where everyday life took place. Food in HCS on the other hand was de-authenticised and sometimes hard to make sense of. This meant that there was a limited shared understanding between pupils and teachers. A spatial analysis of the HCS classroom as a learning space for food showed that past ideologies and traditional power geometries were built into the physical layout and social relationships constructing the room. Food in HCS was found to reflect cultural values of the surrounding society at the same time as a specific HCS cuisine emerged. Food in HCS was thus constructed as contested in interaction between food, pupils, teachers and classroom as well as in relation to a wider context.

‘Food with a purpose’– Home Economics teachers' construction of food and home

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how children can be empowered in the research process, as active agents and key informants, in matters affecting their consumption.Design/methodology/approach – Insights are drawn from a study that used multiple methods to explore children's everyday food consumption practices. The data set was gathered over a period of two years and included: 23 informant‐generated visual diaries; seven online depth interviews; 15 school‐based depth interviews; 42 days of school‐based mealtime observations; and home‐based mealtime observations with four families, each visited on five different occasions.Findings – The paper uncovers how visual diaries can be used in combination with other methods to transform relationships between adults and children in the research encounter. The emergent transformations are organised around three core themes that include: children's authentic voices; multiplex reality; and power and control. It was also found that children were able to ...

Recovering children's voices in consumer research

Examining the role of physical appearance in Latino adolescents' ethnic identity

While the literature on ethnic identity takes traditional “adult-centered” socialization theory for granted, this study breaks away from such a perspective, and instead uses ethnographic data on children's food exchange during lunchtime in two predominantly Korean (-American) elementary schools to explore how children use food as a symbolic resource to negotiate group boundaries in peer interaction. Following a discussion of lunchtime seating patterns, this article presents children practicing exchange of “dry food (mass-consumed)” and “wet food (homemade)” that takes three different forms—gift-giving, sharing, and trading—each of which have different relevance for marking, maintaining, and muting ethnic boundaries and other social differences. Taking a child-centered perspective, the study finds that children's ethnic identity development is by no means a universal linear process. Instead, preadolescent children, although constrained by external forces, learn to do layered and situated ethnic identity th...

Misako Nukaga

Papers

The Underlife of Kids' School Lunchtime Negotiating Ethnic Boundaries and Identity in Food Exchange