Resisting eating during a family mealtime: The moral and identity work of food refusal

Recent developments within social influence research have demonstrated how resistance is temporally and sequentially accomplished within social interaction. The everyday morality of trying to get another person to do something against their will has, however, not been fully explored. Using the example of a sequence from a family mealtime, this paper illustrates how a concept typically understood as an individual concern - food refusal - can be reframed as a social phenomenon involving the delicate management of local identities and moral responsibilities. The study uses a single case analysis of a video-recorded interaction from a UK family mealtime. Using discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we demonstrate that food refusal can be examined as interactional resistance, with different forms of resistance embedded within diverging action trajectories. The analysis illustrates an instance of 'reluctant compliance', involving a complex configuration of complying with a directive while simultaneously displaying unwillingness to do so. Finally, we highlight that dealing with resistance within the family mealtime involves the management of local identities and the moral sensitivity of claiming deontic authority over another person's food consumption. The analysis has implications not only for research on resistance and food refusal but also for the everyday accomplishment of social influence within families.