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University of Edinburgh
School of Social and Political Studies
Social Anthropology
2011-12 (Semester1)
Course Title:The Anthropology of Food
Course Code:SCAN10052
Semester 1: Thu 11.10 – 13.00, Seminar room 5, Chrystal Macmillan Bulding; + 1hr MSc tutorial every 2 weeks, time and place TBA.
Course convener: Professor Francesca Bray ()
Office hours: Thu 15.00-16.30, Chrystal Macmillan Building Room 5.22.
Short description
`Man ist, was man isst' - we are what we eat, says the German proverb. Eating is a basic biological requirement to sustain life, but what we eat and how we eat it is not simply dictated by environment and technology, it is a mark of how we understand ourselves, our place in society, and how we distinguish ourselves from others. This course will draw on a range of anthropological research to explore the culture, economics and politics of food in the modern world. We shall investigate what a focus on food can contribute to the study of identity, memory, gender, globalization and justice. We shall pay special attention to the political economy of food, exploring what anthropology has contributed to understanding and meeting the challenges of a deeply unjust global food-system, starting with colonialism and now addressing the contemporary period in which governments and planners which must grapple simultaneously with excess and desperation, with ‘epidemics’ of obesity and ever-rising levels of chronic hunger.
Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course the students should have a thorough understanding of the main currents in the anthropology of food, their articulations with the broader discipline, and their potential for bringing key anthropological issues into focus. They should be familiar with the most influential anthropological analyses of food and its role in social or cultural formation, from the pioneering studies of Malinowski and Audrey Richards, through the structuralists and the political economists, to recent emphases on identity, meaning and memory or on social movements and global assemblages. Critical analysis and discussion of case studies and theoretical essays will build anthropological skills in evaluating the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of different approaches.
Teaching
2-hour lecture each week (1 hour lecture by course convenor followed by 1 hour of guest lecture, or film, + class discussion). 1 hour MSc tutorial every 2 weeks. Attendance at lectures and tutorials is compulsory for all students.
Assessment
Assessment is based on two essays. The first, of 1500 words, is worth 30%, the second, of 2500 words, is worth 70%. See the Honours Handbook for more complete information about assessment procedures. Topics for the essays will beposted on WebCT.
Course work should be submitted in person (not by a friend or relative) to Miss Katie Teague, the Administrative Secretary in Room 1.10, on or before 12 noon on the specified dates, as follows:
1st essay (1500 words): due week 5, by 12.00 on Tuesday 18 October.
2nd essay (2500 words): due week 13, by 12.00 on Tuesday 13 December.
IMPORTANT: Essays must be submitted by you in person (not by a friend or relative) to the Administrative Secretary, not to anyone else. Essays submitted by email, fax or post will NOT be accepted.
You must submit 1 word-processed copy of the essay, which should have a cover sheet with your examination number (but not your name), the course title, an exact count of the number of words in the essay, and a plagiarism declaration. Cover sheets are available from Room 1.10, Chrystal Macmillan Building.
In addition, you must also submit an electronic version for all coursework and essays via WebCT by the same deadlines. The School is now using the ‘Turnitin’ system to check that essays submitted for honours courses do not contain plagiarised material. Turnitin compares every essay against a constantly-updated database, which highlights all plagiarised work.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR COURSEWORK AND ESSAYS ELECTRONICALLY
Create an essay file.
Save your essay with your exam number as the file name, e.g. 1234567.doc. Do not include your name anywhere on the project to ensure anonymity.Files must be in Word (.doc), rich text (.rtf), text (.txt) or PDF format. Microsoft Publisher, Open Office and Microsoft Works files will not be accepted. Failure to do this will cause delays in getting your project back to you.
Open WebCT
Second, access WebCT through your MyEd portal. Open the relevant course (under the ‘Courses’ tab).
Upload the essay file
At the Course Home Page click on the Essay Submission icon on the Course Content page. This will take you straight into the submission page for your assignment. (You can also access this through the Assignments tabsituated on the Course Tools bar at the left hand side of the page). Here you can upload your essay as an attachment. – Just click on ‘add attachment’ and select the file from your computer.
Click on Submit when you are ready.
Lateness and Length
Essays over the word limit will lose 10% of their marks. (This applies as much to essays of 5 words over as to essays of 500 words over). This word limit includes footnotes and appendices but not the bibliography.
Any apparently deliberate misrepresentation of the word count or failure to declare a word count will lead to a deduction of 20 marks. N.B. This can affect your final result.
Five marks per working day will be deducted for assessed course work and assessed essays handed in late. Assessed work arriving more than one week (five working days) after the deadline will receive a mark of zero. It must however be submitted, or you risk being recorded as not having completed the course; your ability to graduate could be affected by failure to complete the requisite number of courses.
Class organisation:
Readings: each week there are 3 required readingswhich you should go through carefully as preparation for the lecture.
Further relevant readings, some theoretical, some ethnographic, are listed in the Bibliographical guide on WebCT. They are not compulsory, nor are they comprehensive. They are resources that you can explore for taking ideas further, especially when writing your essays.
Honoursstudents are always encouraged to read book-length studies and monographsas well as short pieces, and a number are included below. Try to read at least 3 of the books listed in the Bibliographical Gudie over the course of the semester: there are some anthropological themes which are too complex to be dealt with in an article, and a critical reading of a book is often very helpful for exploring how anthropology as a discipline encourages us to think. Essays which engage with books as well as articles will get you off to a good start with the examiner!
Remember that your readings for this course not just about food – they are ethnographic and theoretical resources for your anthropological studies more generally, so as you read, connect.
Lectures: Lecture outlinesare given in the syllabus below. They are intended to help you select readings and to provide orientation in preparation for the lecture, and to serve as memoranda for organising your notes and ideas afterwards. They are not substitutes for the lecture.
Consultation: e-mail is of course an option, but it’s not the best medium for anything but simple questions and answers. For proper discussion you are very welcome to talk to me (after class, in office hours or by appointment) about any aspect of the course, including the selection of essay topics.
Syllabus
Please see Bibliographical guide (on WebCT) for additional reading suggestions including books, articles, specialised journals, etc., and for the references in the lecture introductions below.
Week 1. General introduction
No readings; lecture will outline important trends in the anthropology of food.
Film: The Kawelka: Ongka's Big Moka, Charlie Nairn and Andrew Strathern, 1976, Granada Disappearing World; 52 min.
Week 2. Eating to live: food, nutrition and health
‘Underlying the rich symbolic universe that food and eating always represent ... there is the animal reality of our living existence. It is not separate from our humanity, but is an integral part of it. Only because most of us eat plentifully and frequently and have not known intense hunger may we sometimes too easily forget the astonishing, at times even terrifying, importance of food and eating’ (Sidney W. Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, p.4).
Like all other organisms, humans must ingest nutritive substances in order to live, grow and reproduce themselves. Modern nutritional science classifies foods into nutrient groups, identifies deficiencies, and defines parameters of healthy eating; the messages it provides are by no means static, however, and there is much debate about the extent to which it is possible or desirable to pin down universals in human food needs - after all, for centuries the Inuit have survived without ever eating their spinach, the Jains without any ‘high-quality’ protein. Each culture has its own concept of what constitutes a ‘real food’ and a ‘balanced diet’ - here symbolic analysis is useful, while the approach of political economy allows us to focus on the power relations that constrain the availability of food and thus shape our eating practices.
Readings for lecture:
Borré, Kristen (1991) ‘Seal blood, Inuit blood, and diet: a biocultural model of physiology and cultural identity’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 5, 1 (Mar 1991): 48-62.
Caldwell, Melissa L. (2007) ‘Feeding the body and nourishing the soul: natural foods in postsocialist Russia’, Food, Culture & Society 10, 1 (Spring 07): 43-71.
Gross, Joan & Nancy Rosenberger (2010) ‘The double binds of getting food among the poor in rural Oregon’, Food, Culture & Society 13, 1 (March 2010): 47-70.
Guest lecture: Tania Porqueddu
Week 3. Forbidden fruit: interpreting food symbolisms
Frazer launched the symbolic anthropology of food in his section on Food in Questions on the Customs, Beliefs and Languages of Savages (1907) which begins: ‘Do they eat everything edible? Or are certain foods forbidden?’ Frazer continues through cannibalism and whom it is legitimate or customary to eat - these questions, as Jack Goody points out (Cooking, Cuisine and Class: 10-11), continue to interest anthropologists especially of psychoanalytic or structuralist bent. Structuralist analysis supposes a series of linked structured systems, for example ‘with food, the ingredients in a dish, the dishes in a meal, the meals and dishes in a cuisine would be seen as forming structured systems in which the elements are relationships between qualities, tastes, smells, textures; some of the elements would link these food systems to other systems - those perhaps evident in drink, sexual regulations, magic and medicine, music and so forth. These systems might be analysed as structural transformations of each other. Certain substances - typically and classically blood, semen, milk, magical plants - would recur and might be analysed as “operators” by means of which people make sense of their daily experience of these different cultural systems’ (Richard Tapper Sami Zubaida, ‘Introduction’, in Zubaida Tapper, Culinary Cultures of the Middle East: 16.) As Goody remarks, studies of food taboos, ritual meanings, or commensality, tend to concentrate on consumption, on equations of food and sex or on the forging of solidarity rather than on farming technology or political organization. There is also an anthropological tradition, however, typefied by Marvin Harris and favoured by sociobiologists, which argues that food taboos and practices are ecologically or evolutionarily grounded.
Readings for lecture:
Douglas, Mary (1972) ‘Deciphering a meal’, Daedalus 101,1, Myth, Symbol, and Culture (Winter, 1972): 61-81.
Gow, Peter (1989) ‘The perverse child: desire in a native Amazonian subsistence economy’, Man n.s. 24, 4: 567-582.
Sobo, Elisa J. (1997) ‘The sweetness of fat: health, procreation and sociability in rural Jamaica’, in Counihan and Esterik, Food and Culture: 256-71. (WebCT)
Film: Sin tierra, no siamos Shuar(Without land, we are not Shuar).GranadaCentre for Visual Anthropology, dir. Stacey Williams, 2009.
Week 4. Food, fertility and social reproduction
Hospitality, food exchange and commensality are all considered fundamental (yet fraught) elements in the creation and consolidation of social bonds and values (Mayol, Tapper & Tapper, van Esterik, Wilson). In the modern West we have been worrying for decades about the disappearance of the family meal and what it may portend for society (Murcott). Political leaders are responsible for assuring food for their subjects, sometimes directly through performing magic or ritual (Malinowski, Linares), or through controlling and distributing grain supplies (Meillassoux), sometimes indirectly, providing lavish feasts that assure the future - feasts are also events at which social ranking is confirmed or renegotiated (Rappaport, Watson).
Food nourishes our bodies and allows us to grow and mature; however its nurturing role goes much further. In many societies the fertility of fields and of women are linked, and ancestors like children must be fed if society is to live and prosper (Seaman, Thompson). Christian rituals assure worshippers eternal life through partaking of the wine and the wafer that are the blood and body of Christ, and in other societies too the dead provide food (and immortality) for the living (Metcalf).
Readings for lecture:
Holtzman, Jon D. (2003) ‘In a cup of tea: commodities and history among Samburu pastoralists in Northern Kenya’, American Ethnologist 30, 1 (Feb 2003): 136-155.
Thompson, Stuart E. (1988) `Death, food, and fertility’, in James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (eds), Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, Berkeley, University of California Press: 71-108. (WebCT)
Yan, Yunxiang (1997) ‘McDonald's in Beijing: the localization of Americana’, in Watson, Golden Arches East: 39-76. (WebCT)
Guest lecture: Siobhan Magee
MID-TERM ASSESSMENTS DUE TUESDAY 18 OCTOBER
Week 5.Food and gender
Activities around food are crucial in the structuring of gender roles and relations. In almost every society male and female food-producing activities are differentiated (Hugh-Jones, Sillitoe, A.I. Richards), though not always in ways Westerners might expect. The values attached to the production and preparation of food, and to foodstuffs, are also frequently bound up with ideals of femininity or masculinity (Maclagan, Uzedonski).
The case of breast-milk is an interesting one: in Western traditions it is the key symbol of nurturance, which is thus closely tied to femininity – but this is by no means a universal belief (van Esterik, Gotttschang). Another intriguing issue is the gendering of authoritative knowledge about ‘good’ eating practices (Jing, Morsy).
Readings for lecture:
Jing, Jun (2000) ‘Food, nutrition and cultural authority in a Gansu village’, in Jing Feeding China's Little Emperors: 135-59. (WebCT)
Maclagan, Ianthe (1994) ‘Food and gender in a Yemeni community’, in Zubaida & Tapper: 159-72.
Uzendoski, Michael A. (2004) ‘Manioc beer and meat: value, reproduction and cosmic substance among the Napo Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon’, JRAI 10: 883-902.
Guest lecture: TBC
Week 6.Identity and distinction
This class looks at the role of food in the construction of identities and differences between social groups, whether it be by gender and generation, by nation, class, region or religion ... In Cooking, Cuisine and Class Goody raised the issue of whether low and high, poor and rich are always distinguished by the food they eat; Bourdieu provides a rich analysis of how working-class and bourgeois French in the post-war period did differentiate themselves by food practices (not necessarily determined by income alone). The literature on the place of food in the formation of national or ethnic identities is huge (Appadurai, Ohnuki-Tierney). The growth of the tourist industry has given a huge fillip to the concept of ‘typical’ or ‘authentic’ local foods (Vizcarra Bordi), and for diaspora communities foodways are usually a key tool for reconnecting to the imagined community (Sutton, Mintz).
The historian Fernand Braudel suggests one useful approach to understanding why food is such a powerful medium for shared identity, and for differences within that shared identity, when he speaks of material culture, including food, as a language: ‘[O]ur investigation takes us ... not simply into the realm of material ‘things’, but into a world of ‘things and words’ - interpreting the last term in a wider sense than usual, to mean languages with everything that man contributes or insinuates into them, as in the course of his everyday life he makes himself their unconscious prisoner, in front of his bowl of rice or slice of bread’ (Braudel 1992: I,333). In times past both language and food used to change more slowly (though foodstuffs have been travelling the world and changing local habits for millennia), but in the modern world of communications and media both change fast, groups identify themselves by special usages, and as with language US foodways have been colonizing the world, with complex results. Under pressure from outside, ‘traditional’ food may be mythologized (Ohnuki-Tierney, Warde) or hybridized (Mintz [‘Eating American’]). Fasts or food taboos characterized many religions, and in some of its contemporary manifestations we might think of vegetarianism as a characteristic of a modern, secular anti-capitalist religion (Lora-Wainwright, Willetts).