Role of Social Identity in Feeling Membership in a Community
Belonging to a certain social group or coming from a particular background may influence one's tastes or the norms that remain important in their lives. When it comes to the Foodie community, the interviewees who tended to feel part of that community had some similar social identities that might influence their continued norm of going out to eat.
BACKGROUND: AFFLUENT FAMILIES GOING OUT TO EAT
A portion of the people in the Foodie community seemed to come from affluent backgrounds, with a few interviewees noting that paying "big bucks" for a fine dining experience may be worth it. One thing this group of people had in common was going out with their families to eat on a regular basis; this aspect of their social identity might influence the current norm in their life of regularly eating out. There is even concrete evidence in the interview data that people whose families tended to eat out often now go out to eat more regularly, showing quantitatively that the norm of going out to eat with one's family (and that being part of their social identity) influences their current norm of dining out often. We see that these interviewees go out to eat an average 3 times/week, whereas the average for all 27 respondents is 2.4 times/week. Overall, we see that more affluent families (those that are higher in economic capital) are able to transfer that economic capital to all of the different types of cultural capital we've talked about that come with being a Foodie, such as knowledge about different cusines.
BACKGROUND: SOCIAL GROUP APPRECIATING RESTAURANT CULTURE
Many other interviewees in the Foodie community who did not talk about a family norm of going out to eat often did bring up that their Northwestern friends do go out to eat often, and that their friend groups resultantly take trips to restaurants. In this way, these Foodies developed a social identity through friends. In these cases, it is belonging to a social group that has a norm of going out to eat that influences these Foodies' membership in the Foodie community.