Habits and orders of everyday life: commensal adjustment in Anglo‐French couples

This paper examines processes of habit reshuffling and change in different contexts of household formation, looking specifically at habits regarding eating and commensality. It is based on a study of 14 couples, each with one English and one French partner, half of whom live in France, half in England. We examine the interplay between partners, their determination to eat together as a couple, and the various ‘orders’ associated with their commensal pact (diets, routines, extra‐marital commensality), both when they start as couples and as parents of young children. We draw on the specificity of cross‐national couple experience to cast light on processes of adjustment – to one another, and to the new country of residence for the migrant partner. In particular, we explore the potential of notions of ‘split’ and ‘solid’ ‘patrimonies of incorporated habits’, ‘re‐shuffling’ of habits and dispositions, and ‘habit memory’, to characterize the dynamics of habits at play in each of the orders under scrutiny. Overall, the paper contributes to the analysis of habit as the ‘stuff’ of orders of everyday life.     

Eating together and eating alone: meal arrangements in British households

Sociology traditionally accounts for eating in terms of the social organization of meals, their provision and consumption. A recurrent public concern is that the meal is being subverted. This paper examines meal arrangements in British households in 2012, drawing on an online survey in the format of a food diary administered to 2784 members of a supermarket consumer panel. It charts the organization of contemporary eating occasions, paying attention to socio‐demographic variation in practice. Especially, it explores companionless meals, putting them in contexts of food provisioning and temporal rhythms. Findings show that eating alone is associated with simpler, quicker meals, and that it takes place most commonly in the morning and midday. Those living alone eat alone more often, but at similar meal times, and they take longer over their lone meals. Comparison with a similar study in 1955–6 suggests some fragmentation or relaxation in collective schedules. The implications are not straightforward, and the causes probably lie more in institutional shifts than personal preferences. Declining levels of commensality are, however, associated with a reduction in household size and, especially in households with children, difficulties of coordinating family members’ schedules.