What is food anthropology?
When I tell people I am studying the anthropology of food, I am usually met with a blank expression. Some people are game to ask what that means, a question I find difficult to answer even now, a year and a half into my course.
I generally start by saying “Well anthropology, very generally, is the study of human culture and society. Food anthropology is about that, but the focus is always food related.” This, it turns out, is not very helpful. Expressions have changed from blank to baffled.
The main thing I find difficult to convey is the breadth of the topics covered. People often assume that the subject is largely historical and that it namely deals with the exotic. I'm not sure where the first idea comes from, but the second is hardly surprising. Anthropology is a discipline with its roots in Western colonialism, and for much of its development the focus was on ‘other’ cultures.
Very crudely, as the West expanded across the globe they encountered cultures different to their own. This encouraged them to think about their own culture in new ways.“A long range goal of anthropology was the discovery of general laws and propositions about the nature of mankind” (Lewis, 1973: 582). In documenting and researching other cultures, Westerners sought to better understand themselves.
From this, it is easy to understand why the next question people often ask is something along the lines of: “So is food anthropology about what different tribes or cultures used to eat?” The answer is, yes, that certainly could be an area of study in food anthropology, but it is only a small part of a big picture.
Around the 1960s the emphasis in anthropology began to shift. The context of decolonisation called into question many of the core assumptions of anthropology, which were rooted in the imperialist agenda. Today anthropology can be seen as a more self-reflexive and inclusive discipline, “the study of all men through a multiplicity of perspectives” (Lewis, 1973: 590). These days, it is just as likely that one might choose to study one’s own culture as another, and it is worth emphasising that anthropology is just as likely to deal with the present as the past. Food anthropology is cultural and it can be historical, but it also deals with contemporary social and political issues. Food, as a fundamental human necessity, touches almost every aspect of our lives. For this reason it provides a useful perspective from which to explore wider social, cultural, political and economic issues.
But what do we actually study? Perhaps it would help to tell you some of the topics we cover. We began the course with texts which looked at hunter gathering cultures, the beginnings of agriculture and the industrialisation of agriculture. The first term focused mainly on the social aspects of food anthropology, such as food and national identity, food and the body, and food and memory. The second term had a more political focus, looking at topics such as food and famine, biotechnology, and ethical consumption and production.
Still sound vague? I’m hazarding a guess that the answer is yes. That is why I am starting this new section on my blog. I hope to make it less so.
This term I am taking the Media Productions Skills module, one of the aims of which is to encourage anthropology students to enhance their coursework and research with multimedia forms of communication. It is becoming increasingly important to use visual representation to communicate ideas and academia has often been slow to catch up.
In this new section on my blog, I plan to discuss a range of topics related to the anthropology of food. These posts will be based on weekly topics covered on the MA Anthropology of Food, as well as areas of particular interest to me, such as food, identity and memory. I plan to use the new skills I have learnt on this course - photo, audio and video editing - to make my presentation of these issues more interesting and engaging.
One of the reasons I chose to do the media course was to encourage myself to improve my photography skills - both in terms of the photography itself and post-production. I hope that these skills will transform my whole site, not just this new section.
The course has also piqued my interest in audio editing and I am planning a series of podcasts where I will talk to friends, colleagues, classmates and aquaintances about their food interests (and mine). I will also aim to make a short video of each of the people I interview to run alongside the podcasts.
I hope that this section on my blog will help to make food anthropology more accessible and encourage more people to think about some of the social and political issues. If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know in the comments.
References
Lewis, D. 1973. Anthropology and Colonialism. Current Anthropology, 14(5), 581-602.
Reader Comments (13)
Brilliant! I definitely feel like I understand what you are studying a bit more and I can't wait to read more about it! xx
Thanks for being my first comment on the new blog, Amba-lady :) Glad it makes a bit more sense. More soon! x
Aaaahhhhh - I'm beginning to get it now! I love this blog by the way xx
Thanks KT, always nice to get positive feedback, and especially nice when people take the time to leave a comment :) x
Ah ha! At last I can get my head around what this course is all about. Splendid overview Vix . You may be interested to note that a similar phenomenon has happened in contemporary television. TV programs have for years documented the behaviours and customs of exotic tribes, but recently there have been a lot of programs that take the same in depth look at "tribal cultures" within our own society, anything from the kids holidaying in Ibiza to focussing on a housing estate in say Glasgow. Come to think of it The only way is Esex and Chelsea are the most recent examples of this. I presume all the photos in this post are yours ? the one of the 3kids is a microcosm of what exotic means to different cultures, they look exotic to me, but the way they are looking at you , you look exotic to them. And the Brick Lane Beigel bakery....that brings back memories. I used to stop there for beigels on my way home from night shifts on the Today program.
Look forward to the next post !
Hi Ma, thanks so much for your comment. That's really interesting re. TV programmes. I hadn't really thought of it in that way, but of course it makes perfect sense. I also think your comment about the kids looking at me is really insightful. You certainly do get that feeling from them. These kids were high up in the Andes, where there isn't much tourism and so to them I would still have seemed exotic. In the more touristy areas, they smile and then stick out their hand after. I thought they wanted to see the picture the first time, but soon learnt that they wanted money or sweets. They were well trained :)
Good stuff! Keep it coming :)
This is really helpful. I am often asked the same question and people usually make the same incorrect assumptions too. So now I can point them to this blog post! Very nicely written.
I think our course seeks to understand the world through food. So we use food and all things food related as a lense through which to invesitgate wider economic, social, political and cultural processes. Rather than studying food itself for its own sake, we see what food can tell us. Food is a good 'way in' since it is both personal and social, material and symbolic, everyday and special, and something all humans need.
Whatever, it's been really interesting!!
x
Thanks b... arley? ;) x
Thanks Anna. I think your way of explaining it is really helpful; seeking to understand the world through food and highlighting some of the reasons why food is a good 'way in'. I have added a sentence to this effect. Thanks so much for the feedback. x
This is also good for me when I try to explain to people the course you're doing. Can't wait to read more of this part of your blog xx
A great post Vicki & I look forward to the others to come! I think you explained your course very well to me recently in Sydney, but this blog will cover more than we managed to discuss! :) I am particularly interested by the module you mentioned studying on 'food and memory' as on the weekend I was at a party and talking to a kind of spaced out hippy type who was telling me that if we all ate properly from the earth, healthy organic produce that isn't processed we wouldn't need hospitals at all- someone said, "what if I broke my arm?" and I said what about palliative care and mentioned dementia to which he said that dementia is a relatively new thing and has become common only in recent centuries due to the poor diet of humans- I have NO idea whether this is true or not, but it really got me thinking about health and food and diet and how it all correlates! Studying different cultures through their diets would surely illuminate such a topic! For instance I wonder the rate of dementia in the remote people of the Andes you photographed, or a PNG tribe deep in the jungle, free of 'Western" mass produced rubbish foods! Enjoy your studies, you are lucky to be doing something so interesting! xox
Hey Ray, thanks for your comment. I hope it helps to make better sense of it.
Hey Luci, thanks for your comment. I think you were right to be skeptical about what the 'spaced out hippie type' (haha, love it) was saying. There are two sides to everything and I think the answer is usually somewhere in the middle. This person sounds like they had quite an extreme view - as you say, there are plenty of conditions that can be treated by modern hospitals which are not caused by our diet. The increased life expectancy and aging population in much of the Western world are testament to that. On the other hand, there are some diseases and illnesses that are attributed to modern diets, for example, diabetes and obesity. I have heard that people do something called the 'paleo' diet where they only eat things that would have been available in the paleolithic period. This doesn't make sense to me, as I think our bodies have evolved along with our diets. However, I do try to avoid processed foods as much as I can - I definitely there is truth in that. Science is so contradictory though and can be biased depending on who is funding the research. It is hard to know what to believe... x
Love this post - as everyone has already said it certainly sheds more light on what exactly you are studying!
I think this side of your blog is great so far and certainly very different (to anything I have read).
Food is SO important (and not just to people like us who think of nothing else) and as you explain above, it really does "touch every aspect of our lives"! I love Lucinda's comment about the extreme hippie - I wonder if he thought to retort that perhaps the person with the broken arm should have had more calcium in their diet and then it may not have happened in the first place ? ;P
Keep it up Vixy! looking forward to next week's readings! x