Not quite your grandmother's jam: Place, time, and identity in constructing a home-canning community of practice

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of food studies. Taking a qualitative, discourse-analytic perspective, I analyze the discursive strategies employed by a group of home canners in the construction of their community of practice. The community of practice framework (Wenger 1998) posits three defining characteristics: mutual engagement of participants, a jointly negotiated enterprise, and shared repertoires. Drawing on narrative analysis and adopting an anti-essentialist view of identity, I examine the way members use the discursive construction of time and place as symbolic resources in the formulation of their identities and in the maintenance of their community. Directions for further research into the complex relationships among language, identity, and food are recommended.