Dinner Party (Agentic Participant Observation Case Study)

Abstract

In order to cast light on various aspects of eating out and entertaining at home with food, Warde and Martens (2000) interviewed 33 principal food providers in 30 households in the Preston area, England, in 1994. Apart from conducting interviews, they also carried out a questionnaire survey involving approximately 1000 people drawn from London, Bristol and Preston (three cities in England). With regard to entertaining people with a meal at home, Warde and Martens (2000) state:

Either explicitly or implicitly, most interviewees drew upon a cultural template of a dinner party against which their own social practices were described … [The middle-class dinner party] is a highly structured event which includes an elaborate menu, a prescribed set of rituals, a particularly defined set of companions whose patterns of interaction are set out, and an injunction of exceptional care and attention on the part of the host and gratitude on the part of the guest. (p. 57)

Their interviewees suggest that the meal should have at least three courses and that these would be more special than those eaten on an everyday basis. Warde and Martens (2000) suggest that while the template for the dinner party seems to be universally held, few people follow it to the letter.