Middle class' eating-drinking patterns as a class oriented differentiation and integration

Since the 1980's sociology of food and nutrition has come into being as a sub-field in sociology. In the last two or three decades, sociology of food and nutrition has become an important issue with the debates on healthy diet, public health and dietetics in the world. This is considerably a new field of research dealing with eating habits, food cultures and practices in general. The scope of this thesis is in the field of sociology of food and nutrition, as used to be known as sociology of food, sociology of eating where social class consuming patterns differs in a great deal. This study primarily aimed to examine food consumption of middle class in Eskişehir and understand eating-drinking practices and eating out habits of the middle class that reproduce social class relations in respect to eating-drinking places, covering sociological analysis of places in terms of sociology of food and nutrition. There are few studies in sociology of food and nutrition in Turkey. This research, conducted in Eskişehir, where the city is thriving, transforming and gentrifying in the urban place, aimed to understand eating-drinking practices and eating out habits of middle class and their social relations with eating-drinking places, carried out in the field of sociology of food and nutrition. In this study, qualitative approach has been used for the analyses in order to comprehend ways in which everyday practices of middle class in relation to eating-drinking practices and eating out habits. This dissertation claims to be one of the first emprical research in the field of sociology of food and nutrition in Turkey. The universe of the research is the middle class households in Eskişehir. The sample of the field research is determined by the snowball sampling technique within the middle class families living in a middle-sized city, Eskişehir. Indepth interviews was carried out with 23 middle class households. In addition to this, 16 indepth interviews were conducted in eating-drinking places, where middle classes prefer to eat out in gentrified places and parts of city center. Keywords: Sociology of food and nutrition, sociology of consumption, middle class, consumption, habitus, cultural capital, space.