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Consumers' increasing fascination with recreational eating out has contributed to numerous transformations in the upmarket restaurant practice. This paper explores such changes in regard to the "social" aspects of eating out, focusing particularly on the "cultural phenomenon" and practice of eating publicly alone (solo dining). Specifically, the paper extends previous portrayals of solo dining as a bundle of aloneness and togetherness by exploring such interplay in the context of the aestheticization of eating and/or the aesthetic food(ie) movement. Based on the interviews of Finnish food/restaurant enthusiasts and exponents of solo dining, the paper firstly depicts solo dining as a practice in which eating publicly alone is celebrated for the sake of enhanced aesthetic immersion. Secondly, the paper argues that solo dining can indeed be interpreted as a form of eating together and depicts the myriad ways, both concrete and "anonymous", through which solo restaurant meals are shared between like-minded enthusiasts. Thus, the aesthetically oriented slice of solo dining becomes not understood as a complete departure from the ideal of shared public meals but as an alternative manifestation of commensality within an enthusiasm-based consumer group characteristic of late modern consumer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the blurring boundaries between food and art in the West by examining the contemporary field of upmarket dining. The study adopts a practice theoretical view, conceptualizes artful dining as a large-scale cultural formation ("teleoaffective formation"), and explores the configurations of artful dining in the context of New Nordic Upmarket Bistros (NNUBs). Based on blog texts, chef interview and participant observation at a Finnish NNUB, the study demonstrates how the local restaurant enthusiasts adopted and adjusted artful dining in a specific, "everyday" context of upmarket dining. The study presents dining at NNUBs as one of the many practices that have substantially expanded the art-oriented dining ideals beyond modernist cuisine. It discusses artful dining within the contemporary (gourmet) food culture and encourages further diversification of approaches in studies examining artful dining and the intersection of food and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does dull turn into cool? Every now and then new markets emerge and consumption that used to be mundane and insignificant transforms into something socially significant. Using the theoretical lens of cultural system transformation, this research set out to analyze how consumers, through their identity work, unintentionally transform a market by negotiating its symbolic boundaries and expanding its borders in relation to their social surroundings. The results showed that consumer identity work contributes to forming the market by providing it with new symbolic meanings (epistemic, entertainment and erotic), by extending it with new discursive and material content (through epistemic refinement), and by expanding it through the provision (active and unintentional promotion of the consumption field to confirm their own identity) of new consumers. This research added to at least three ongoing conversations in marketing research; (i) to the macromarketing research stream on marketing systems by taking a cultural system perspective and recognizing the subtle but transformative impact of symbolic consumer meanings and identity work, (ii) to the consumer culture theory (CCT) research stream on market formation by highlighting consumers' unintentional change of a market through intense identity struggle in their immediate social circle, and (iii) to both above streams by highlighting what makes identity struggle distinct at a mundane rather than more controversial or extraordinary market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes food issues in both the advanced capitalist and developing worlds, as well as discourses and struggles that have developed in response to them, as a point of departure. The exposition begins with a description of food sovereignty movements and their successful struggles. Third-world campaigns for food security are inspiring cases of resistance, of struggle for disalienation. The focus then shifts to the problems with the contemporary North American diet, and the 'foodie' response to the epidemic of poor eating and resulting poor health. Foodie culture as it has developed in the advanced capitalist world has severe limitations, particularly in regards to its treatment of gender and class. Yet it also contains important messages about meaningful human interaction with nature in the form of food procurement and preparation. The analysis developed here strives to go further than a critique of the distribution and availability of foodstuffs in the contemporary capitalist economy. The aim is to understand contestations over both the production and consumption of food in terms of some key categories of Marxist philosophy. It is argued that using the concepts of alienation, division of labour, and production of consumption can strengthen the case for food sovereignty while also mounting a critique of foodie culture that nonetheless preserves its constructive insights. More specifically, this means that an exploration of the relationship between the division of labour and alienation can demonstrate the negative consequences of industrially produced foods, while affirming the necessity of alternative forms of food production and consumption. Everywhere and in different ways, capitalism alienates humans from their species-being. This article argues that this fact is particularly evident with regards to the industrial food system. However, just as food can be a site of oppression, so too can it be a locus of struggle against capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]