Convivial Quarantines: Cultivating Co-presence at a Distance

Abstract

Sociology’s focus on sociality and co-presence has long oriented studies of commensality—the social dimension of eating together. This literature commonly prioritizes face-to-face interactions and takes physical proximity for granted. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 largely halted in-person gatherings and altered everyday foodways. Consequently, many people turned to digital commensality , cooking and eating together through video-call technology such as Zoom and FaceTime. We explore the implications of these new foodways and ask: has digital commensality helped cultivate co-presence amidst pandemic-induced physical separation? If so, how? To address these questions, we analyze two forms of qualitative data collected by the first author: interviews with individuals who cooked and ate together at a distance since March 2020 and digital ethnography during different groups’ online food events (e.g., happy hours, dinners, holiday gatherings, and birthday celebrations). Digital commensality helps foster a sense of co-presence and social connectedness at a distance. Specifically, participants use three temporally oriented strategies to create or maintain co-presence: they draw on pre-pandemic pasts and reinvent culinary traditions to meet new circumstances; they creatively adapt novel digital foodways through online dining; and they actively imagine post-pandemic futures where physically proximate commensality is again possible.

My Home Quarantine on an App: A Qualitative Visual Analysis of Changes in Family Routines During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile

“…The confinement during COVID-19 accentuated these dynamics by introducing abrupt disruptions into people’s life and routines. As a result, we have seen the proliferation of socialization practices with various articulations and hybridizations between the “physical” and the “virtual,” as in the study of digital commensality (Bascuñan-Wiley, DeSoucey, and Fine 2022 ). In that way, today’s digital ethnographer faces the task of producing co-presence with subjects at a distance and articulating a “digital complicity” where trust is built in fragmented but intimate qualitative reports from participants using digital devices.…”

“…Scholars and policy experts have pointed out that qualitative evidence is key to understanding how people and communities make sense of public health and social measures and how individuals and families experience and act on the consequences of a global pandemic (Schatz et al 2013 ). Qualitative contributions are especially relevant for checking common behavioral assumptions in epidemiological models (Palinkas 2014 ), foreseeing unexpected outcomes of health and safety restrictions (Bascuñan-Wiley, DeSoucey, and Fine 2022 ; Siu 2016 ), uncovering the needs of vulnerable populations and medical and task forces (Chafe 2017 ; Godbold et al 2021 ; Huang et al 2021 ), and helping engage communities and stakeholders in building public health and social interventions (Abramowitz et al 2015 ). The nuances that depth descriptions, local knowledge, and interpretative analyses provide on people’s experiences and meanings allow decision-makers and health authorities to design and implement action plans tailored to specific population groups, especially those affected disproportionately by the pandemic and its economic, social, and health consequences (Averett 2021 ; Fine and Abramson 2020 ; Power 2020 ).…”

Characterizing Healthy Dietary Practices in Japan: Insights from a 2024 Nationwide Survey and Cluster Analysis

“…These findings suggest that communal eating facilitates access to nutritious foods, encourages balanced eating habits, and serves as an anchor for establishing routine and structure around meal times. The sociocultural significance of dining together extends to the realm of mental well-being, with qualitative research by Bascuñan-Wiley (2022) and a systematic review by Harrison (2015) indicating that shared meal times strengthen social cohesion, foster a sense of belonging, and enhance overall life satisfaction [5,37]. This is particularly relevant in contexts where social bonds are under pressure, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic or among populations experiencing rapid cultural transformation.…”

Food‐related experiences and behavioral responses among people affected by chemosensory dysfunctions following COVID‐19: A scoping review

“…However, the in‐depth analysis of food‐related experiences and related behavioral responses would have gone missing. A further possibility would have been to broaden the search to effects of the pandemic, including, for example, studies about how everyday eating and commensality are affected by the physical distancing imposed by restrictions (Bascuñan‐Wiley et al, 2022; Ceccaldi et al, 2020; Fourat et al, 2021). This would, again, have resulted in a larger sample of publications, but the analysis would have inevitably become more social scientific and less applied to nursing and other healthcare professions.…”