ABSTRACT
Every one knows that there are different eating styles and that the way people entertain varies widely. But to date food writers have not related entertaining styles to the working life of householders nor to how they relate to the communities in which they live. Instead, dinner parties are condemned as exercises in indulgent, conspicuous consumption, as commentators from Petronius to Veblen have asserted, or are dismissed as mere expressions of group identity and good fellowship.
