Introduction to Beyond the Superficial: Making Sense of Food in a Globalized World (original) (raw)
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“Let There Be Food”: Evolving Paradigms in Food Studies
Food Studies is not the literal study of Food. Food studies looks at peoples connect with food. It straddles several tropes all together. It addresses issues of Culture and Identity. Food plays a consistent role in how issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and national identity are imagined or perceived. It helps define and characterize as well as show how notions of belonging are affirmed or resisted. Food, then is a central part of the cultural imagination. It interpolates the dynamics of metaphor, symbolism and is a constant point of reference in literature. Almost every study in culture cannot but draw its inferences from how food is seen in literature. Literally and figuratively food provides “food for thought”. This paper discusses the cultural significance of Food as metaphor and the notion of Food as metonym in the elaboration of culture and identity. Key Words: Food studies, food habits, food and identity, food and culture, Identity
Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner. Food: In Context. Cengage Gale. 2011
"To a man with an empty stomach, food is God." -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) // As memorialized in the opening chapter of his book A Moveable Feast, the American writer Ernest Hemingway sets out on one of most renowned walks in literary history, a walk that takes him from his humble apartment in Paris to eventually write in a "good café on the Place St. Michel." // Nearly ninety years later, one can still, as Hemingway recalled, walk past the Lycée Henri-IV and the ancient church Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, into the Place du Panthéon…. Food: in Context is not, however, a book about gastronomy or the impacts of globalization on cuisine per se. It is, rather, a book dedicated to offering a first course in food-related science, politics, and issues. While food is art -- its history and expression both mirroring and articulating subtle cultural differences -- its provision in some areas devolves to more sharply drawn struggles with outcomes measured in health or sickness, life or death. (download to read more) ---- K. Lee Lerner & Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, Senior editors. Paris, France. December, 2010.
Food for thought: on practices, tastes and food systems from a social anthropological approach
This communication is situated in the field of food anthropology and aims to discuss aspects of the act of eating from the cultural point of view. The research will raise some practical considerations about cooking or eating while mobilizing the marking of meanings and identities. Understood as a unifying field of study on food culture, anthropology has contributed to the reflection and understanding of the food phenomenon in analyzes that incorporate representations, beliefs, knowledge and practices that are inherited and/or learned and that are shared by individuals of a given culture or a particular social group. We will approach the notion of food system as a broad proposal capable of bringing different disciplines into an understanding of the food phenomenon as endowed with complexity and able to grasp the dynamics involved in contemporary living, where there is a clear cultural heterogeneity.
Everyone eats: understanding food and culture ? By E.N. Anderson
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2007
Everyone eats is an introduction to food and culture studies in anthropology built on Anderson's extensive ethnographic fieldwork in China, Mexico, and the Mediterranean and his broad review of social science literature. He takes a biocultural approach to address such sweeping questions as: Why do we eat the way we do? What is the role of biology and culture in determining our foodways? What explains the radically divergent food preferences and practices that prevail in different cultures? What and how do we communicate with food, and how does it establish community, difference, and enmity? What can be done about global inequalities in access to food? The first four chapters constitute a kind of introduction to biological anthropology through the lens of food. Anderson begins with a chapter on the evolution of human food habits entitled 'Obligatory omnivores'. He explores the human proclivity to eat almost anything by looking at the evolution and interconnectedness of human dentition, digestive system, brain development, language, sociability, and tool-and fire-use. He surveys the diets of contemporary hunter-gatherers to explain human cravings for certain foods and aversions for others as well as the growing problem of obesity. The second chapter, 'Human nutritional needs', is an intriguing discussion of basic human nutrition enriched by lots of interesting ethnographic data. For example, Anderson explains how across cultures humans attain sufficient protein even without meat by combining vegetables with complementary amino acids such as dal (lentils) and rice in India, pasta e fagioli in Italy, and tortillas and beans in Mexico. In Mexico, he explains further, soaking the corn in lime to produce nixtamal releases the niacin that otherwise is inaccessible to the human digestive tract and thus prevents the disease of pellagra that was such a scourge to corn-dependent populations in Italy and Spain. Not only does nutrition take on a lively aspect when grounded in both cross-cultural data and human biology, but so does Anderson's discussion of 'The senses' in chapter 4. In chapters 5-13, Anderson increasingly widens his lens of analysis to include the economy and environment; food as pleasure, communication, and social marker; the role of food in health and medicine; food, meaning, and religion; changing culture and foodways; cuisine as border, boundary, and ethnic identity; and global hunger and possible solutions. While affirming that 'the most basic determinants of foodways are environment and economy' (p. 82), Anderson is no determinist, and he offers numerous examples of how communication, meaning, and identity trump environment in explaining food practices. For example, he rejects the 'dubious ecological explanation' (p. 93) for the Northwest Coast Indian potlatch that said it was a means of redistributing resources in hard times, and suggests that it is better explained as an example of globally widespread 'merit feasts' where leaders attain power through 'competitive generosity' (p. 95). Foodways, Anderson repeatedly demonstrates,
Anthropological Notebooks, 2006
This article is an introductory discussion of a special collection of articles on food, all based on research that looks at the world through the food lens, exploring the role of food as a medium for addressing 'controversies' that are not necessarily about food. The authors highlight major theoretical concepts from anthropology and the sociology of food and eating which arise out of seven research articles based on ethnographies from Malta, Great Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Central America and Slovenia. The first part of this article discusses the concept of a proper meal and related subjects, such as homemade food, health and the medicalisation of the everyday diet; the second part introduces theoretical accounts of the role of food in the perpetuation of social and ethnic differences, the appropriation of foreign foods into local cultures, and the revival of 'authentic' food practices through the process of inventing traditions.
2008
We are constituted as human beings by the food we eat as well as by what we consider food. This course uses a cross-cultural perspective to explore the ways in which preparing, eating, and thinking about food demonstrate culturally determined gender and power relations around the world. We will emphasize the study of the connections among food, gender, the body, and culture in the Mediterranean. We will read philosophy texts, ethnographies, and popular food books in order to explore issues as diverse as cultural meanings of nutrition and body images, food and national identities, eating disorders, 'high' cuisine, and 'countercuisine,' radical consumerism, and the 'slow food' movement, among others. We will also engage in community-based research exercises throughout our voyage, with the objective of encouraging students to move beyond intellectual discussions to an experiential approach toward food production and consumption.
I argue that a primary aim of philosophical reflections upon food and food practices should be to affirm their significance to and meaning for human life. The production, consumption, and appreciation of food enjoy a broader significance to human beings that ought not be reflectively disaggregated into separate ethical and aesthetic concerns. This claim is connected with complaints from various gastronomists and philosophers, who allege that certain deleterious contemporary attitudes towards food are partly consequences of our failure to appreciate the significance of food. I conclude that a key desideratum for any philosophy of food is its capacity to inspire and enable reflection upon the significance of food and food practices to human life.
Food in contemporary society.pdf
This publication is based on the five year Nordic discussion dealing with food and its various roles and meanings in the contemporary society. The discussion has mainly been carried out amongst five university departments, their lecturers, researchers, visiting scholars and enthusiastic students. The Department of Food, Health and Environment from Gothenbourg University, the Department of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics from University of Uppsala and the Department of Curriculum Research, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University from Copenhagen have been the long standing partners. Akershus University College from Norway participated in the beginning of the project and Tallin University from Estonia joined the group two years ago. The Department of Home Economics and Craft Science at University of Helsinki, Finland has coordinated the project. A careful reader will notice that the names of the participating departments have changed during the project and the swaping of names seems just to continue. These structural changes in each university have made the academic discussion more needed than ever.