Aim and development of the project

The aim of the project was to investigate how changes in the meal order affect ideals and practices of contemporary homes, thereby gaining perspective on how family life, gender and the relationship between work and leisure have changed in Sweden. The research questions focused on issues related to food and ingredients, use of different media, cooking skills, meal situations, gender, and kitchen artifacts.

Project structure and implementation

In the start up phase, an inventory of previously collected material was conducted, focusing on the open ended questionnaires sent out by the folk life archives in Sweden. The material proved to be suitable for direct comparisons with a contemporary material. Therefore, a questionnaire was prepared (LUF 244, 2016, Meal in transition) with questions that (with updated vocabulary) also existed in previous questionnaires (S 27, 1972 Changes in diet and M239, 1988 Kitchen utensils and appliances). Since the answers to the previous questionnaires related to conditions that extend to the first decades of the 20th century, the project's materials enable studies of cultural processes linked to food, cooking and meals over 100 years.

On the questionnaire LUF 244, 70 replies were received. The answers vary in length and range from 2-15 pages. Eight respondents submitted supplementary material in the form of photographs and handwritten recipe books. In addition to the traditional questionnaire, a shorter questionnaire was prepared for the web. In this way, a somewhat greater diversity was ensured in terms of age, background and place of residence than through the respondents of the traditional questionnaire (which has an over representation of elderly people residing outside the major cities). On the web questionnaire, 71 replies were received.

In addition to the questionnaires, 27 interviews and 5 observations was conducted, then transcribed and archived at the Folk life archive at Lund University. The material was collected mainly during the first half of the project period (2015-2016). The second half of the project period was devoted to analysis, compilation and publication of material from the research. During a stay as a visiting teacher at the University of Iceland, students were given the task of devoting themselves to "Kitchen dumpster diving" to highlight which artifacts that have disappeared from everyday life, and the stories that the objects could tell. This material was used in the article Tales from the kitchen drawers (2019).

The project's three most important results and contributions to international research

The overall most important result that the project has given is a historically comparative material that makes it possible to follow cooking and meals in households in Sweden for 100 years. More specifically, three results can be highlighted.

1. The trivial everyday life of globalization
Through food, cooking and meals, globalization has entered the trivial practices of everyday life. This applies to changes in food supply (such as the availability of fresh vegetables all year round), as well as new ingredients and foods originating outside Sweden. In particular, drinks and spices turned out to have symbolic qualities, which made them useful for the negotiation of globalization. Cooking and meals has also been important for managing and negotiating internationalization processes. One of the conclusions is that the acceptance of a multicultural society has partly been created through everyday practices in the kitchen. In particular, see the article Healthy Drinking? and the forthcoming book Swedish meal culture.

2. The re-gendering of cooking
The re-gendering of cooking, which can be shown empirically with a number of examples in the collected material, is of interest not least from an international perspective. In Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, normalization of male cooking began early on. In the material there are several examples of how men, even in the older age cohorts, have participated in household cooking for most of their lives. Thus, the material can form the basis for international comparisons, with countries where this development started later. One aspect of the changes is the transformation of cooking from a housekeeping rationale to an experience rationale (see also below). Another aspect of these changes is how the transfer of cooking skills from one generation to another seems to have decreased significantly compared to earlier in history. The influence of new media and the power aspects of cooking skills are key factors in this transition. The articles One hundred years of solitude and commensality and The fluid commensality (Den tänjbara gemenskapen) deals with these aspects.

3. The materiality of modernities
The kitchen, as well as its objects, has undergone a standardization process and a decreasing number of kitchen artefacts during the 20th century. In recent decades, however, this trend has been broken and in the present material an increased number of artifacts can be seen in the kitchens of the informants. Both the objects and the kitchen itself have been upgraded. This has been analyzed from a modernity theory perspective, focusing on how the different rationalities of modernity are internalized in everyday life. By everyday interactions with artifacts, different generations learned about pre modern magic, the first modernity’s focus on rationality, housekeeping and self-control, and finally about the second modernity’s emphasis on experiences, lifestyle projects and sensory pleasures. See mainly the article Tales from the kitchen drawers.

In addition to these empirical results, there is a methodological contribution, which consists of a methodology for direct comparisons between questionnaires. Through the preparation of the questionnaire LUF 244 based on previous questionnaires, a partly new methodological approach, which can be applied by other researchers in a number of cultural science disciplines, was developed. It may hopefully generate new insights into cultural processes in other research projects. Although the method of using previously collected material for historical comparisons is not new in itself, the direct link between the formulation of questions in a contemporary and previous questionnaires means both simplification and rigor in the comparisons that have not always existed in previous ethnological research.

New research questions and generated by the project

1. The relationship between cooking and meals from a commensality perspective. While the discourse around meals is that they should be shared, cooking has largely been a job done in solitude over the last hundred years. However, there is an interesting movement towards increased joint cooking, which is partly reminiscent of the time before the industrialization and urbanization of the 20th century. This has been addressed in the article One hundred years of solitude and commensality.

2. "Fathering” Household work and especially cooking has often been emphasized as part of a female caring work, focusing on the upbringing of children. This "mothering" is visible in the material, but since more and more men take over the responsibility for domestic cooking, the question arises of how "fathering" through cooking is performed, and what consequences this has in the homes. This project has not specifically had parenting through food and meals in focus, but it is a promising idea for future research projects.

3. Visible and invisible consumption. Perceived changes in eating habits are not always consistent with the changes that can be observed through statistics. Particularly noticeable is how invisible the increasing meat consumption in the last forty years is for the informants, while many of them mention an increased proportion of vegetarian diet. This has been dealt with briefly in the article Vad stort sker, sker i tysthet, and there are material for in-depth analyzes later on.

Dissemination of results

Project results have been presented at five international conferences, four seminars and about ten public lectures for the general public. Project results have been presented in articles for both the scientific community and in shorter articles in journals for food professionals and archive specialists. The final monograph of the project will be written in order for both the scientific community and the interested public to access the results. Open access has been ensured either directly via the publisher, or via agreement on parallel publishing via the host institution (Lund University), see publication list. The project has provided a rich empirical material that continues to raise new questions and analysis, which will be used for publications and presentations.

National and international cooperation

Collaboration with researchers from universities, primarily in Scandinavia and Europe, has been ongoing throughout the project. At conferences and workshops, project results have been discussed with colleagues from Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, US, UK, Ireland, France, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia and Latvia. Furthermore, results have been published at international conferences. The conference organizers include the SIEF Food Working Group and The Commensality Network, within which a joint publication is being prepared on the theme of commensality. In Sweden, results have been presented to the National Meal Academy. Through many years of contacts with the food industry, project results regarding the meal's change have come to R&D managers, via the Skane Food Innovation Network.