"First You Feast with Your Eyes:" An Aesthetic Approach to Food and Risk. Issue 13 (10th November 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Okamoto, Kristen E.
• Is Part Of: Health communication. Volume 36:Issue 13(2021)
• Page Start: 1590
• Page End: 1597
• Publication Date: 2021-11-10
• Subjects: Communication in medicine -- Periodicals; Health in mass media -- Periodicals; 362.1014
• DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1773706
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1041-0236

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Ideas surrounding risk, especially as it relates to health behaviors, contribute substantially to our understandings of health and wellbeing. However, more than being a way to forecast future behavior, risk is also a social construction rooted in narrative understanding and experiential behaviors. In this essay I seek to extend current scholarship on risk through an emphasis on aesthetic sensibilities. Relying on discourse from an ethnographic study of a nonprofit organized to address food insecurity, I examine participant communication surrounding their food behaviors (i.e. preparation, purchasing, and consumption) to illustrate the ways that participants approached risk aesthetically. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications, arguing that the act of accessing risk is itself an aesthetic endeavor.