Cultural Consumption, Cultural Expression

Abstract

The multiple belief and value systems bound up with family practices in South Asian Muslim families in Britain were explored in Chapter 3. This chapter will explore how such value systems are enacted in the context of daily family practices, with a particular emphasis on what families do; what they eat, how they dress and how they choose to spend their free time. Activities related to consumption have been identified as being poorly represented in the available research on families – what Daly (2003) has referred to as the ‘negative spaces’ in family theorizing. These aspects of daily family practice are, Daly argues, pervasive and important in understanding the ways in which families live their lives, and warrant more attention from family scholars. He further suggests that ‘material things’ and consumption help to construct meaning, shape values and beliefs, mediate relationships, and that they are part of the process of ‘identity work and dream management’ in families (2003:778). The idea that material family practices contribute to family identity construction is related to the wider argument, originally proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, that tastes and preferences in consumption tend to express and reinforce one’s position with respect to social and cultural boundaries (Bourdieu 1984).¹⁸