Food and health: Relationships between technology and social sciences

Abstract

Population aging constitutes one of the central issues on the political agenda of the 21st century. The social implications of these population dynamics are subject to discussion due to their evident impact on aspects such as labour relations, health and care systems, pension policy but also on family models or the social construction of feelings. In this context, the understanding of food ideologies and practices in rural populations is a crucial issue in health policies and interventions. With the traditional tools and assumptions of ethnographic fieldwork, our research is aimed at a series of objectives in order to complete the limited knowledge on these issues: (1) to know the nutritional situation of the elderly population in rural areas; (2) to describe cultural food practices and their association with ideologies, representations, supply and availability systems; and (3) to relate technological innovation with our empirical research findings. We can describe two categories of analysis on which we are working. First, the problems of access to food. The circulation of food -“the field of the eatable”- is conditioned from a structural framework. Then, is also crucial in the diagnostic phase. We work too on the mapping of study areas with a variable representation of distances and difficulties depending on factors such as functionality, but also social position or gender. The intersections between socio-cultural approaches and technology occur in the field of interventions. Technological proposals can prove successful and attractive in labs, but they need to “work” in real life.