Skip to main content

Food and Eating Etiquette

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
  • 158 Accesses

Synonyms

Civility; Courtesy; Customs; Decorum; Deportment; Good behavior; Manners; Politeness; Politesse; Propriety; Social graces

Introduction

Dining etiquette is an elastic term whose definition varies drastically across space and time. There has never been, nor could there be, a universal and precise code of manners, and eating behaviors have developed over time according to codes of conduct and idealized styles of comportment within and across cultures. The act of dining occupies a somewhat ambiguous position in the realm of human behavior: eating is a fundamentally corporal activity, and of the several fundamental bodily functions, it is the only one that is carried out primarily in the company of others, including strangers. Due to its status as both an unavoidably carnal and deeply social activity, dining has developed complex codes of etiquette that attempt to convert the nutritional act of eating into an expression of social status and cultural facility.

Table manners are key...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Beeton, I. (1994). Beeton’s book of household management. London: Chancellor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Casa, G. (1774). Galateo or, a treatise on politeness and delicacy of manners. Addressed to a young nobleman. From the Italian of Monsig. Giovanni de la Casa. London: APA. Printed for J. Dodsley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elias, N. (1978). The civilizing process. New York: Urizen Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erasmus, D. (1961). A treatise of schemes and tropes (1550): And his translation of the education of children by Desiderius Erasmus by Richard Sherry. Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flandrin, J. L. (1999). The humanization of eating behaviors. Food: A culinary history from antiquity to the present (pp. 13–31). New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joly, J. F., Stapel, D. A., & Lindenberg, S. M. (2008). Silence and table manners: When environments activate norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1047–1056.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, K. (1986). Misunderstanding in nonverbal communication: America and Korea. Paper in Linguistics, 10(1–2), 1–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leece, J. (2011). An unexpected audience: Manner manuals in renaissance Europe,The Forum: Cal Poly’s Journal of History, 3(1), Article 11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meir, N. K. (2005). “A fashionable dinner is arranged as follows”: Victorian dining taxonomies. Victorian Literature and Culture, 33(01), 133–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Post, E. (1922). Etiquette; in society, in business, in politics, and at home (Replica ed.). New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raffald, E. (1775). The experienced English housekeeper for the use and ease of ladies, housekeepers, cooks, &c. Wrote purely from practice … consisting of near nine hundred original receipts … The fourth edition. With three copper plates … By Elizabeth Raffald.. London: Printed for the author, and sold by R. Baldwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visser, M. (1991). The rituals of dinner: The origins, evolution, eccentricities, and meaning of table manners. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hannah Smith-Drelich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this entry

Cite this entry

Smith-Drelich, H. (2013). Food and Eating Etiquette. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_43-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_43-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6167-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

Publish with us

Policies and ethics