Restaurants are scattered throughout every corner of the modern American urban landscape. They play a very unique role in society. At the same time, they function as both a consumption space where food is purchased and as a social space where human interaction is the key ingredient. Because they constitute the social element of restaurants, they are a place where social patterns are reflected and created. The scientific study of catering establishments has proven this hypothesis to be true. Academic research has focused on how the upper class seeks to privatize public space and how restaurants historically and currently exclude certain categories of people, even at a basic structural level. All of this research shares a common theme: social boundaries exist in society, and restaurants are a common manifestation of this. Before examining the role restaurants play in creating social boundaries, it is necessary to establish that social boundaries exist in today's society. The work of Margret Crawford shows that these social barricades are a very real phenomenon. Wealthy upper-class citizens are constantly looking for ways to separate themselves from the lower classes. This form of oppression is visible throughout history, and at many times it was clearly intentional, such as in the case of racial segregation. However, in modern society, the increase in legal rights of the lower classes means that this exclusion has become either more muted or non-existent. Crawford argues that it is simply less obvious, noting that "the ruling classes met the advances of these new citizens with new strategies of segregation, privatization, and fortification" (9). Specifically, the upper class has privatized public space, creating environments intended to exclude the lower classes... middle of paper establishments... establishments act as class dividers, which will also enhance understanding of modern class relations. like society as a whole. Works Cited Crawford, Margaret. “Contesting the Public Realm: Struggles for Public Space in Los Angeles.” » Journal of Architectural Education 49.1 September (1995): 4-9. JSTOR. Internet. January 31, 2011. Lobel, Cindy R. ""Out to Eat" The Emergence and Evolution of the Restaurant in Nineteenth-Century New York City." Winterthur Portfolio 44.2/3 (2010): 193-220. JSTOR. Internet. January 31. 2011.Neal, Zachary P. “Culinary Deserts, Gastronomic Oases: A Classification of American Cities.” » Urban Studies 43.1 January (2006): 1-21. Internet. February 10, 2011. Shelton, Allen. “A theater for eating, watching and thinking: the restaurant as a symbolic space.” Sociological spectrum; The Official Journal of the Mid-South Sociological Association 10.4 (1990): 507-26. Print.