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Abstract
The present research explores food provisioning practices within women's lives. By
drawing upon French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu's notions of habitus, cultural
capital and field, a conceptual framework of the complex process leading to food provisioning
practices is developed and investigated. To this end, repeated semi-structured interviews,
participant observation, diaries and media analyses were conducted over a 3-month
period with 11 women residing in Auckland (New Zealand), who were largely responsible
for household food provisioning. The findings set the scene for challenging the notion
of free choice. We argue that food provisioning practices are shaped by a process
of trade-off between preferred practices and the constraints operating at a given
point of time, resulting in practices which demand convenience in food provisioning
to minimize time and cognitive effort.