Conspicuous Competence

Sharing a meal seems like an egalitarian, democratic sacrament. Alice Julier thinks not, and argues in her Eating Together: Food, Friendship and Inequality that food practices have built-in hierarchies. In her TLS review of the book, Fran Bigman points out that “Although affluent hosts talk about wanting to make guests feel comfortable, a formal dinner party – “trial by fork” – furnishes an excuse to show off; Julier employs Margaret Visser’s argument that ‘conspicuous competence,’ or the ability to prepare sophisticated global food, has replaced ‘conspicuous consumption’.’ Some of Julier’s less affluent interviewees react against these ‘snob dinners’ by hosting nights such as ‘beanies and weenies’ at which no dish may have more than three ingredients. Others, including one young, gay African American man, produce burlesques of the dinner-party form at which they cook elaborate meals, such as ‘Crepe Purses Mushroom Duchelles [sic]’, a parody of the seventeenthcentury French dish.”

Potlucks come closer to an egalitarian model: “Rather than enforcing social exclusion, potlucks honour difference and symbolize cultural blending.” Even with potlucks, though, “hierarchies remain; hosts generally provide the main dish, and the meals often foster community within, not across, social groups. The custom seems unlikely to catch on in Britain. Julier explains that when an English couple who had studied in California threw a potluck dinner after their return, their guests found the idea stingy and inhospitable.”

Even when everyone has a place at the table, some places are more equal than others.