Richard P. Jenkins: Sociability in Mid-
Jutland: When Eating and Drinking is the
Point, rather than Food and Drink
This paper is based upon nearly a year’s field
research in a town in mid-westem Jutland,
Denmark. Ethnographic data is presented
about the range of occasions for eating and
drinking which are available to its
inhabitants: eating at home, meetings, annual
general meetings, parties and celebrations,
and public eating on demand and at need.
The argument is made that the social
occasions of eating and drinking are more
significant than the food and drink itself.
This is related to a complex of cultural values
concemed with sociability, consensus,
mutuality, communality and apparent
equality, which finds its widest expression in
the Danish welfare State. Developing
changes in the structure of private life and
households - and in the values just itemised
- are related to changes in the organisation of
eating and drinking. A more general
argument is also offered, about the need to
re-orient the study of food and drink towards
a processual study of eating and drinking
