2023-09-29 13:21:51
Fast food and gastronomy apparently go well together. Sociologist Mohamed Merdji discusses the reasons for the success of McDonald’s in France, citing the carnival spirit, equality and the archipelago of the metropolis. Interview on the go.
According to your study (McDonald’s moments), published in 2023), the American brand is still as successful with the French. In what context did you become interested in this subject?
Mohamed Merdji: It all started with astonishment, that of these endless queues which formed in front of McDonald’s restaurants at the end of the first confinement, in May 2020. Although I have 25 years of career in sociology of food, I am not immune to stereotypes. How could a fast-food brand have as its second largest market in the world, after the United States, the country whose gourmet meal is classified as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO? To this question, I wanted to provide a sociological answer.
What makes this “gastronomic meal of the French” classified by UNESCO so special?
A few years ago, I participated in a large international study led by one of my colleagues, Claude Fischler, research director at the CNRS, where we investigated the eating habits of the French, Europeans and Americans. What we have highlighted is the existence of two models of food culture. The first, the Anglo-Saxon model, is a functional and individualistic model. When an American is asked about the meaning that the act of eating has for him, the first answer he gives relates to the technique and the tools (barbecue, frying pan, fridge, microwave, grilling, frying, boil, etc.); then comes the practical aspect. For an American, this act should ideally be as quick and simple as possible. It is only then that he talks about foods, which are otherwise only discussed with regard to their nutritional properties. This is why, in the Anglo-Saxon model, the act of eating is one of the rare acts that is compatible with almost all others since it is not considered as a social act. It is therefore possible to eat while driving your car, walking or attending a class. The study showed that, in this case, there was never spontaneous mention of what we call commensality: that is to say the fact of sharing a meal in common with the aim of satisfying a social dimension and shared pleasure. Now, it is exactly this characteristic which is specific to the second model; that of Latin countries and more specifically of the French. To the same question, the first class of response given by a French person integrates the notions of pleasure, taste, cooking, family, colleagues, friends or even parties. We are therefore here in a design which gives its place to pleasure, sharing and conviviality, but also to products, through the image of the terroir, the market and the producers.
What is this paradox that makes this Anglo-Saxon model so successful in imposing itself at the very heart of its antithesis: the French model?
Historically, the restaurant is a French invention which dates back to the Revolution and which reproduces the model of the aristocratic table, that is to say a form of conviviality marked by hierarchy and interpersonal relations. When you go to a brewery, you find yourself in an extremely formal setting. Eating requires posture and restraint. We control ourselves, we eat with our cutlery as neatly as possible. In France, we learn to eat this way from a very young age; both at home and in the canteen, since this institution also plays, in this respect, a major educational role.
80% of people under the age of 60 say they go to McDonald’s at least once a year.
51% of French people who go to McDonald’s have rituals, that is to say visits associated with particular moments in their lives.
If education in the art of cooking is so prevalent in France, why go to a restaurant that seems to lack it?
McDonald’s represents a break with our tradition. Because it is a model that comes from a country where the culture of distinction is not part of the history of catering. It is even a sort of antithesis. And this is what is interesting sociologically speaking. Because at McDonald’s the French have fun, like at carnival, in reversing all the codes of their food education. But in a ritual and derogatory way to better reaffirm them afterwards. Nearly half of the French people surveyed spontaneously associate McDonald’s with a rite. Those most cited are family rites: the vacation route, a special moment between mother and daughter, between grandparents and grandchildren or even the birthday of the little ones. But there are also rites with friends, colleagues or, for adolescents, with friends. The McDonald’s moment is the moment during which the French, adults and children alike, allow themselves to take a playful distance from the rules they impose on themselves at home or in other spaces dedicated to meals. Since they can go there, to use their words: with family, with their children or their friends, to eat, with others and “in a good way”, with their fingers, putting all the fries on the same tray, bite into their hamburger without fear of getting stained and even laugh when it happens. At McDonald’s, everyone is in the same boat since we cannot distinguish ourselves either by the way we eat or by what we have on our plate. This explains why this restaurant is naturally inclusive.
In 2013, a book was published to which you contributed at Odile Jacob and which asks the question of whether in the future we would still eat together due to the individualization of behavior. The inclusive aspect of McDonald’s restaurants, which the study highlights, seems to show that these restaurants are on the contrary an important place for socialization. What is this due to?
The book dealt with food cultures while showing the differences that continue to exist between the model of “French” commensality and the individualism that characterizes the food practices of the Anglo-Saxon world. I think that the defense of this model of “eating together” is one of the responses that we can provide to the phenomenon of identity, social and community withdrawal which was highlighted by Jérôme Fourquet through what he calls “the ‘archipelization of France’. And it is for this reason that it may seem paradoxical to note that a restaurant like “McDo”, in which some only want to see a sort of archetype of this individualist model, has become, today , and in the eyes of the French, one of the privileged places for living together. Because the study clearly shows that what the French particularly appreciate at McDonald’s is first and foremost the fact of being able to interact with people who are not like them. In other words, its social, cultural and generational diversity. We could almost say that McDonald’s fulfills the social function previously occupied by Bouillon, the restaurant where “the tie-breakers” and the workers met in the same place to eat a common dish together.
So this also relates to the egalitarian dimension which is inscribed in French political culture?
Yes. The most emblematic institutional place in this regard is the school or company canteen. Who today would dare to oppose the idea that companies should have a place where all employees can meet to eat together? Who would dare to oppose the idea that school canteens should be places in which children from poor and better-off families should be able to come together to eat the same thing together, at the same table, without there being is there discrimination? In a certain way, McDonald’s also offers a framework which allows us to respond to this social demand for equality, which is intrinsically French.
Par Victor Tenac
Photo Anthony Guerra
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