Peasants and Bourgeois

Theresa Wellington- McGilton 

Professor Simpson 

16 March 2021 

Response Paper 6

Peasants and Bourgeois 

In Eaters and the Eaten, Berger showed how different kinds of people eat in different ways as well as for different reasons. There is a line drawn between the bourgeois and peasants. Bourgeois treat their meals as a kind of entertainment/ enjoyment whereas the peasants treat their meals as something that comes as a result of hard work. 

The bourgeois created a society that they partake in regularly, the consumer society. In a consumer society the primary goal is to consume, eating fancy meals as well as hosting multiple groups of people in your home to “show off” your money. This stemmed from the 19^th century among the French bourgeois who lived for pleasure. They created a society, the consumer society, that depended on their consumption/ other activities revolving around it. 

On the other end of things were the peasants, they are another reason the consumer society was so successful. However, their contribution to the success was for different reasons. Peasants worked as hard as they did so they could survive, so they could eat. They were the primary reason the rich got to stay rich. Peasants didn’t go looking for the most extravagant food they could find, instead they stuck to the foods that were easily accessible to them or otherwise cheap to purchase. This way of eating was different than the bourgeois because they didn’t choose their meals based off of what would make them look the most well off, they chose them based off of what they needed to survive so they could continue to work and survive.