Interview with Anna Colquhoun: Food and Class

Photo courtesy of Anna Colquhoun

Meet Anna Colquhoun, chef, cooking teacher, food writer, and consultant on BBC Radio 4's, The Kitchen Cabinet. Anna is also studying the MA Anthropology of Food at the School of Oriental and African Studies. How she finds time to do all these things is wonder to me.

In this podcast I talk to Anna about her research interests: food and social media, seasonal and local food, and food, class and space in London. Here is a short video introducing Anna and some of the themes touched on in the interview:

In looking at food and social media, I ask Anna whether she thinks the rise of food in social media - for example, people tweeting their dinners - reflects an increased interest in food in the UK more generally or whether it might be distancing us from the food issues today. I am particularly interested in whether, like me, she has noticed a paradox between the rise of celebrity chefs, cooking programmes and food in social media in contrast with a general decline in cooking skills, as people buy more pre-prepared food and eat out more.

I'm also interested in finding out where Anna stands on debates around seasonal and local food, particularly with how this ties in with debates around ethical consumption.  

Food, class and space in London is a new topic for me and I ask Anna to elaborate on how these issues intersect.

I have called this interview 'Food and Class' because, although we talk about her three different research interests, class is a running theme throughout. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

If you are interested in finding out more about Anna, or attending one of her classes or supperclubs, you can find all the information you need and more on her website: http://www.culinaryanthropologist.org/

Food is symbolic

Food is symbolic. I encountered this idea early on in my studies in food anthropology. It is often presented as one of reasons why food is useful as a ‘lens’ through which to explore wider social, cultural, political and economic issues. But what does this really mean?

It took me a while to gain more than a superficial understanding. As I write this it becomes clear why that might have been. I had never been encouraged to think beyond the macro level. The idea that food is symbolic remained an abstract concept, referring to food in general and applied broadly.

A few months into my studies I had a eureka moment. I read two papers in which the authors honed in on a single foodstuff of particular importance to the society they were studying. Their focus on a specific food in a particular context made it much clearer to me why food is symbolic and how this can be a useful way of exploring other issues.

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The Industrialisation of Agriculture

Our class on the industrialisation of agriculture started with a simple game of word association. Professor Harry West asked us to think of terms that we associated with this idea. These were the results:

When we had completed the task, Harry made an interesting point. He highlighted that any term that evokes this many associations is complex by nature. For this reason we can’t rely on the term to say any one thing, because it says something about all of these things.

It is also clear that it means different things to different people.  As budding anthropologists we placed emphasis on the socio-cultural dimensions of agricultural industrialisation, as well as considering the environmental implications. The results would probably look quite different if we were a class of economics students at the LSE.

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Hunter gathering and agriculture

Since I was brought up in Australia’s Western consumer culture, I have unconsciously accepted a society fuelled by food production as a normal way of life. For me, the term ‘hunter gatherer’ conjures images of ‘bush tucker’, nuts and berries, survival of the fittest. My perception is not inherently negative, rather a romanticised vision of a lifestyle that is foreign to me and, for the most part, outmoded.

The three readings I discuss here forced me to question these preconceived notions. Each highlighted how cultures based around food production are seen as the norm, while other modes of subsistence, such as hunter gathering, are seen as backwards, inferior or socially unacceptable. None of the authors agree with this view, but instead shed light on how and why these perceptions have been socially constructed.

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