ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the complexities of social inclusion in relation to the demonisation of the rioting mob, and the key differences between ownership within the community and belonging to the community. It extends the relationship between the access, not just to food, but to tastes, to the sense of belonging-to ideas of citizenship and civilised society-by examining the decivilising effects on those who are denied the choice of taste. The chapter addresses the specific problem of the response of the community to the individual in the crowd who becomes disaffected through displacement, dispossession, and political voicelessness, all of which can be related in nineteenth-century Britain to problems of scarcity and starvation. It discuses dehumanising effects of collective hunger, moves through the complexities of othering hungry foreigners, to the other who attempts to be heard by emulating expectations of civility, and ends with the civilising effects of sharing food and tastes.