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Linking socioeconomic disadvantage to healthiness of food practices: Can a practice‐theoretical perspective sharpen everyday life analysis?
Author(s) -
Halkier Bente,
Holm Lotte
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.13251
Subject(s) - disadvantage , sociology , socioeconomic status , perspective (graphical) , agency (philosophy) , everyday life , social inequality , practice theory , inequality , disadvantaged , life course approach , hierarchy , social psychology , psychology , social science , political science , economic growth , economics , population , mathematical analysis , demography , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science , law
Food is one of the key themes in public health policy and debates over inequalities in health. In this article, we argue that more research is needed to understand how socioeconomic disadvantage is translated into low degrees of healthiness. We suggest that everyday life analysis may be sharpened by way of drawing upon a practice‐theoretical perspective on the mundane processes involved in this translation. We base our suggestion on a small review of three strands in the literature on social inequality, food and health, namely public health research, lifestyle analysis and everyday life studies, and we take our analytical starting point in the latter. In the article, we argue that a practice‐theoretical perspective may enable research in social disadvantage and healthiness of food that describes and interprets variants in the conditioned agency, which cuts cross the multiplicity of different practices that make‐up people's daily lives. Finally, we suggest that a stronger focus on social interaction and social hierarchy would adapt a practice‐theoretical perspective further to empirical analysis in the field of food, health and socioeconomic disadvantage.