Moralities of sharing and caring : Gender and food in the moral household economy

This paper propounds the concept of the moral household economy in order to understand and explain gender performances in food practices of sharing and caring in the socio-cultural domain of unpaid food work. Households are the immediate context for meeting people’s food and nutrition needs and for everyday practices of caring and sharing, which are based on moral responsibilities. By applying the concept of moral economy to households, the boundary that separates abstract morality from the morality acknowledged and implied by social practices is challenged. Since the household is a gendered sphere, moral household economies are gendered. We integrate these notions into one theoretical construct, drawing on illustrative cases to exemplify linkages and processes. The paper offers a novel theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between gender and food by looking at food practices of sharing and caring in the context of the household as a space of gendered morality.