Abstract

This article explores social processes of workplace food. The discussion of this article draws on an ethnographic field project in a downtown Atlanta, Georgia business office to illustrate that project participants operated food to facilitate specific social processes. Commensality at the project site was a common thread for each social process. The article is an excerpt of my thesis manuscript and presents an analysis for two critical research themes: agency and affect. I articulate that project participants’ encounters with food intersect rapid workplace changes. By presenting workplace food as a cultural lens for a focus of anthropological inquiry, the analysis argues the importance of the workplace as a cultural context for understanding human engagement with food. I argue that the workplace is an important cultural site because of the intense time and involvement that many people have with it. Implications for uses of workplace food research include commercial and organizational management applications. The data for the research presented in this paper was collected through ethnographic methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and content analysis.