The Norwegian hot-dog: Exploring meaning and materiality in convenient meat consumption

Keywords: Meat consumption, convenience food, social practices, materiality
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 46

Abstract

‘Convenience food’ is central to contemporary, industrialized, unhealthy and unsustainable food systems (Halkier 2017). For consumers, it usually involves meals that are easy, allowing them to save time and mental effort across the food practice involved, such as planning, preparation, eating and cleaning up (Jackson and Viehoff 2016). The hot-dog can as such be understood as an epitome of convenience food. Still, notions of convenience are socially and culturally constructed, often sliding ‘between or across understandings of what is to be considered “proper food”’ in discourses of everyday life (Halkier 2017, 134). This paper analyzes the meaning and materiality of the Norwegian hot-dog, exploring how and why the hot-dog has taken center stage in a wide range of Norwegian social practices, from national holidays and celebrations to hiking trips and summer barbecues. Using a practice theoretical approach, we analyze how meat consumption and convenience culture become entwined in and reproduced through specific social practices. While demonstrating the strong social and cultural embeddedness of the Norwegian hot-dog, we simultaneously argue that the hot-dog's specific materiality could create a possibility for meat replacements. The analysis builds on in-depth household interviews and focus groups in four geographical contexts in Norway, exploring how the hot-dog has traveled from signifying sustainable utilization of resources from slaughtered animals for low-end markets to becoming a symbol of both convenience and celebration across socio-economic backgrounds, practices and geographies in Norway.