Food and eating provide a fascinating way of exploring socio-cultural change in general, and a specific phenomenon through which to explore the ways in which social change occurs across multiple levels of everyday life. This research adopts an in-depth socio-historical mixed methods case study of changes in food and eating in the English city of York.
A range of methods have been used, including interviews with local residents, longitudinal analysis of government food datasets, and documentary analysis of the Mass Observation Archive 1945 food menus and 1982 Food Directive. A key part of this research has focused especially on change and continuity of ‘food hates’ over the life course. The project is driven by complexity theory and centres around the methodological challenge of exploring multi-level longitudinal socio-spatial change and continuity using real social data.
The analysis and integration of such varied types of data represents a significant methodological and conceptual challenge.
