This chapter considers the origins of contemporary practices. It identifies forces accelerating and retarding change including globalisation, informalisation, aestheticisation and commodification. It argues that the principal features of the contemporary ideal of dining out began to form in the 1970s when the appeal of variety and greater flexibility in respect of new foods, procedures, timings and venues grew. Informalisation of manners occurred in parallel. The glimmerings of a new informed appreciation of food appeared in print and visual media which intensified from the 1990s. Familiarisation of dining out, informalisation of manners and the expectation of greater variety in practice sustained the trend towards a gradual revision in orientations towards eating.

In late January 1939, almost 500,000 Spanish Republican refugees fled into France after the fall of Catalonia to the Nationalists. Once in France, the refugees were indiscriminately placed in concentration camps on Mediterranean beaches. Surrounded by barbed wire and lacking shelter, many refugees felt their plight was directly caused by the Non-Intervention Agreement signed by their current host, France, and its ally Britain. While France was obligated to deal with the Spanish on its own soil, many expected Britain to do something to support the situation it had helped create. Thus, the British Red Cross received a £50,000 grant from the British Government to aid the work of the French Government in the camps – a paltry sum significantly hampered by both insufficiency and inefficiency. This case study highlights the close relationship that exists between national governments and national Red Cross societies and argues that, in the Spanish Civil War, the biased ‘neutrality’ of the British Government, through the Non-Intervention Agreement, directly influenced the actions and attitudes of the British Red Cross. It further investigates how the British Red Cross’s work during the Spanish Civil War reveals the priorities and prejudices of the British Government during the late 1930s.

This chapter explores the role of dining out in expressions of taste in contemporary society, with special reference to the cultural omnivore thesis. People in higher social classes are more likely to appreciate a wide variety of cultural forms and practices. It is shown that diversity and variety, while of universal appeal, are envisaged in different ways by different people. Some people have a broad repertoire and wide experience, and they are likely to be of high socio-economic status. Wide experience in itself does not necessarily signify or entail exceptional interest in food or dining out, although it will always provide resources for talk, reflection and judgement. For many culinary omnivores, food is an object of considerable enthusiasm. Enthusiasm does not necessarily coincide with a search for distinction but in practice it often does. The omnivore thesis is explored using different operational measures of social class.

The Third Carlist War confronted the Spanish liberal Government’s troops with legitimist rebels between 1872 and 1876, and was a baptism of fire for both the Spanish Red Cross and other, non-Spanish Red Cross organisations that committed resources to the humanitarian relief effort. Though the British National Aid Society appears to have refrained from involvement in this long and bloody war, several members of the British Order of St John of Jerusalem were active in the theatre of war as volunteer humanitarians. While some of them, such as Vincent Kennett-Barrington (1844–1903), went to Spain on behalf of a Society for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded of the Spanish War, others, such as John Furley (1836–1919), chose to work on behalf of the Société des Secours aux Blessés Espagnols – a committee settled in Paris with the unofficial support of the Spanish and French Red Cross. This chapter examines the mixed motives, activities and ideas of these international humanitarian volunteers, offering a snapshot of the confused – and far from unified – ‘spirit of Geneva’ at work in the years immediately following the signing of the Geneva Convention in 1864.

This chapter explores the pursuit of variety. It is widely agreed that in cultural matters broad experience is a worthwhile and commendable objective, and that there is some honour, as well as personal satisfaction and pleasure, in avoiding mere repetition and conservative observance of local tradition. This chapter examines further how people value and develop new tastes. This underpins a trend towards diversification. Divergence in experience and its uneven distribution in the population counteracts tendencies towards familiarisation and normalisation. Differences within the population are illustrated by close examination of the orientations of interviewees towards variety when eating out, paying special attention to how people incorporate foreign styles of cuisine into their personal repertoires. The chapter employs survey and in-depth interview data.

This chapter considers the nature of experiences of food preparation and consumption in the home, as indicated by evidence from both the survey and interviews about practical arrangements, the company kept and the foods eaten. It explores gender differences in the preparation of household meals and considers how different types of households provide for their own needs. It is argued that domestic arrangements continue to change, slowly. Family meals, although less frequent, are more practically difficult to stage, which means more shared shopping and cooking for busy families. On weekdays, men are perhaps becoming more involved in decision-making and shopping, a movement towards their becoming more involved in mundane food preparation. Weekends offer other opportunities. Change is most apparent among younger cohorts. While younger women probably cannot abdicate primary responsibility for provision of dinner, arrangements for domestic food preparation are becoming less rigid.

Dining out, or eating a main meal away from home, is now a symbolically significant popular activity which provides a complementary source of food and companionship. This chapter introduces a book examining dining out both as customers in commercial venues and as guests of friends and non-resident kin. It describes the outline of a re-study of an activity with considerable cultural and symbolic significance. It also identifies key debates in cultural sociology in the twenty-first century around theories of globalisation, cultural omnivorousness, cultural intermediation and aestheticisation.

This chapter is a case study of the activities of, contexts for and influences upon Red Cross actions and thinking, specifically within the context of war, colonialism and power, and of how, theoretically at least, neutral Red Cross assistance to sick and wounded soldiers was undertaken. This problem is explored through a comparative analysis of the Nederlandse Rode Kruis (Dutch Red Cross) in the years when Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands (1940–5), and the Nederlands-Indische Rode Kruis (Dutch Indies Red Cross) through the years of Japanese occupation and the following war of decolonisation (1942–50).

The Chinese Red Cross Society was founded in 1904 by a group of Chinese elites intent on helping their countrymen trapped by the Russo-Japanese war in north China. But even before this date, the Red Cross Movement was familiar to the imperial Chinese Government and to a growing cadre of Chinese intellectuals, merchants and officials. How did the Chinese understand the Red Cross Movement? How did they come to adopt a western organisation, permeated by principles and preoccupations foreign to China’s own cultural and material context? This chapter uncovers the original Chinese debates regarding China’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions and the formation of a Red Cross society sparked by the 1899 meeting at The Hague. These debates reveal important insights and correctives to the idea of ‘universality’ in the Red Cross principles.

Eating out occurs under the auspices of three different modes of delivery: the domestic, the communal and the commercial. This chapter compares and contrasts the behaviours in those modes and examines how people put the available options together in order to coordinate many different events. It includes evidence about the use of convenience foods and takeaways and considerations of saving time, as well as eating in restaurants. Through events separately and in their overall combination, people seek to meet functional, social and moral objectives and obligations. From the point of view of individuals, this might be conceptualised as requiring a complex imaginary equation which computes costs of money, time, quality and personal reputation. Considerable variation between households is apparent. Detailed vignettes of interviewees show how each finds different solutions to the problem of permutating varied types of events to construct the platform for their eating arrangements.