CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Scrob, Mircea Lucian |
|---|---|
| Title | FROM MAMALIGA TO BREAD AS THE CORE FOOD OF ROMANIAN VILLAGERS: A CONSUMER-CENTERED INTERPRETATION OF A DIETARY CHANGE (1900 - 1980) |
| Summary | This study describes a dietary change that had involved the ‘core’ foods of a traditional population’s diet. At the broadest level, the study analyzes from a standard of living perspective the decision of rural residents from a compact region of Romania to switch en masse from a predominant consumption of mămăligă to a predominant consumption of bread during the 1960s. By its topic, my study contributes, empirically, to a better understanding of a major change in the lifestyles of rural residents during an under-researched phase of socialism and, theoretically, to the range of approaches that have been proposed for reevaluating consumers’ experiences during socialism. In addition, the dietary change provides the basic data for, first, an assessment of the debated effects of an early socialization into a food culture on later-life food preferences and, secondly, for a reconsideration of the consumers’ perceptions defined hedonically of the historically European-wide and currently global transition from non-bread to bread dietary staples. The results of my dissertation show a) that the standard approaches for reevaluating consumers’ experiences during socialism fail to capture important ‘unconventional’ developments in consumption practices that are specific to the region, b) that the influence of an early socialization into a food culture can be overridden by competing processes involved in the formation of food preferences and c) that the change from non-bread to bread dietary staples can be more fruitfully interpreted by overcoming binary approaches that assume a general preference either for the established ‘core’ food or for the novel ‘core’ food in favor of a more flexible approach that captures better the complexity of the consumers’ food preferences. |
| Supervisor | Iordachi, Constantin |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/scrob_mircea.pdf |
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