All readings for this unit are available via Leganto.

Week 1. Eating together: introduction to the anthropology of food

Thursday July 30

Eating is a profoundly social experience, cementing or marking social intimacies, hierarchies and roles. In this lecture we will talk about the idea of 'commensality': the practice of eating together. We will explore the kinds of relationships and boundaries between people created through various meals: a Javanese feast called a 'slametan'; an everyday Chinese lunch in a Hong Kong eatery; an anthropologist's attempt to share a festive Christmas meal in the Kalahari desert. At this introductory lecture, the structure of the unit, its key themes, and the assessment items will be explained. 

Required reading:

• Clifford Geertz, The Slametan: Communal Feast as Core Ritual, In The Religion of Java, New York: The Free Press, 1960, 11-15.
• Eugene Cooper, Chinese Table Manners: You Are How You Eat. Human Organization, Summer 1986, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 179-184.

Further reading:

• Maurice Bloch, Commensality and Poisoning, Social Research, vol. 66, no. 1, 1999, 133-149.
• Richard Lee, Eating Christmas in the Kalahari, in James Spradley (ed), Conformity & conflict:  Readings in cultural anthropology. Scott Foresman/Little Brown Higher Education: Glenview, 1990, 30-37.
• David Sutton, The vegetarian anthropologist, Anthropology Today, vol. 13, no. 1, February 1997, 5-8.
• James Staples, Food, Commensality and Caste in South Asia, in Jakob Klein and James Watson (eds), The Handbook of Food and Anthropology. Bloomsbury academic: London and New York, 2016, 74-93.

There are no tutorials in Week 1. Please complete the reading for this week, which we will discuss in the Week 2 tutorials. 

Week 2. Taste and taboo

Thursday August 6

Have you ever eaten spiders? Perhaps. Seaweed? No doubt. Raw meat? Guinea pig? Pig trotters? Kangaroo?

Why do some cultures regard certain foodstuffs as disgusting, while others regard these same items as highly desirable delicacies or as everyday foods? How do we learn about these categories? What explains the different cultural categorisations of the same edible foodstuffs? In the lecture, we will survey how prominent anthropologists such as Edmund Leach, Marshall Sahlins, Mary Douglas and Marvin Harris answer these questions, which are fundamental to the anthropology of food. 

Required reading:

• Soleil Ho, Do You Eat Dog? Taste, July 2018. https://www.tastecooking.com/the-dog-question/
• Marshall Sahlins, Food Preference and Tabu in American Domestic Animals,  In Culture and Practical Reason, University of Chicago Press, 1976, 170-179.

Further reading:

• Mary Douglas, The Abominations of Leviticus, In Purity and Danger, England: Penguin Books, 1970, 54-72.
• Marvin Harris, The Abominable Pig, In Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985, 67-87.
• Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Dogs, Whales and Kangaroos: Transnational Activism and Food Taboos. In Marianne Lien and Brigitte Nerlich (eds), The Politics of Food. Oxford: Berg, 2004, 179-197.

Week 3. Cannibals?

Thursday August 13

Was anthropophagy – the consumption of human flesh – a sanctioned practice in certain societies, partaken in for specific cultural reasons? What might it mean to lovingly ingest parts of the body of a deceased family member? Or is cannibalism a myth, generated so that one culture can differentiate itself from others it sees as inferior thus justifying colonisation? We will explore these questions via the lecture, readings and the film Kuru. 

Required reading:

• Beth A. Conklin, Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. 1, 1995, 75-101.

Further reading / watching:

• Kuru: The science and the sorcery (2009) Rob Bygott (available via iLearn).
• Shirley Lindenbaum, Cannibalism, Kuru and Anthropology, Folia Neuropathol, vol. 47, no. 2, 2009, 138-144.   
• William Arens, excerpt from The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, 10-40.
• Don Gardner, Anthropophagy, Myth and the Subtle Ways of Ethnocentrism, in Laurence Goldman (ed), The Anthropology of Cannibalism, Westport, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, 27-49.

Week 4. Gendered symbols, gendered roles.

Thursday August 20

Studying food inevitably involves studying gender relations. We will talk, first, about the symbolic associations that certain foods themselves have – foods and also drinks come to symbolise the qualities which a particular culture associates with masculinity, and the qualities a particular culture associates with femininity. These symbolic associations vary across cultures. Second, we will talk about gender and the allocation of certain roles surrounding food production, cooking, shopping and serving. Power emerges as central to our discussion of gender and food.

Required readings:

• Anne Allison, Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus, In Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik (eds), Food and Culture: A Reader, Routledge: New York and London, 1997, 296-314.
• Anna Meigs, Food Rules and the Traditional Sexual Ideology, In Food, Sex, and Pollution, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 31-44.

Further reading:

• Jeffrey Sobal, Men, Meat, and Marriage: Models of Masculinity, Food and Foodways, 13:1-2, 135-158.
• Alex McIntosh and Mary Zey, Women as Gate Keepers of food consumption: a sociological critique, Food and Foodways, 1989, 3:4, 317-332.

Week 5. Global entanglements: sugar and coffee

Thursday August 27

How did sugar come to be so ubiquitous, and why do we continue to eat it even while knowing it is bad for us? This week we will discuss the way a single commodity such as sugar or coffee involves complex global entanglements. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the use of indentured South Sea islander labour in the Queensland sugar fields; the spread of sugar into a nutritionally deficient English working diet; the use of sweetness to mark the new rhythms of industrial capitalism and the boundary between work and rest; the current status of sugar in Western diets are all intertwined in our exploration of the sweet stuff. In the second half of the lecture we will turn our attention coffee's entanglements. We will survey the rise of cafe culture and the way food preferences express and reflect social class; the nature of the relationship between rural coffee growers and urban consumers; globalisation, commodity chains and debates about economic regulation of global markets. 

Required reading:

• Sidney Mintz, Time, Sugar and Sweetness, in Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik (eds), Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge: New York and London, 1997, 91-103.
• Paige West, Making the Market: Specialty Coffee, Generational Pitches, and Papua New Guinea. Antipode, 2010, Vol.42, no. 3, 690-718.

Further reading:

• Alison James, The Good, the Bad and the Delicious: the Role of Confectionery in British Society, Sociological Review, vol. 38, 1990, 666-688. 
• William Roseberry, The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States, in J. L. Watson and M. L. Caldwell (eds) The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating, USA, UK, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2007, 122-143.
• James Carrier, Protecting the Environment the Natural Way: Ethical Consumption and Commodity Fetishism, Antipode, 2010, vol. 42, no. 3, 672–689.
• Film:  Black Gold: Wake up and smell the coffee (2007) Marc and Nick Francis.

 

Week 6. High food, low food; fast food, slow food. Part one

Thursday September 3

This week we deal with the rise of the industrialised global food system in the post WW2 period. We will cover the centrality of corn in the American food chain, the rise of fast food, and industrialised methods of animal slaughter. We will also talk about the labour practices associated with industrialised food production, focussing on Australia's Seasonal Workers Program.

Required reading:

• Timothy Pachirat, excerpts from Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 140-161
• Michael Pollan, The Meal, In The Omnivore’s Dilemma. England: Penguin Books, 2007,109-119.

Further reading:

• Julie Guthman, Healthy to Eat, Unhealthy to Grow, The Conversation, 2018: https://theconversation.com/healthy-to-eat-unhealthy-to-grow-strawberries-embody-the-contradictions-of-california-agriculture-86907
• Angela Stuesse, A Bone to Pick, in Scratching out a living: Latinos, Race and Work in the Deep South, Berkeley: University of Cal. Press, 2016, 120-146.

Week 7. High food, low food; fast food, slow food. Part two

Thursday September 10

Last week we discussed the industrialised global food system, learning of its environmental impact, its reliance on precarious racialised labour, and the ethics of animal slaughter. This week we continue the exploration begun last week. We shift our attention to various food movements that have emerged as a response to this system. What is the relationship between pleasure, eating and time, according to the Slow Food movement? How does punk food invert and challenge a broad range of social hierarchies. Why do people embark on the Paleo diet?

Required reading:

• Catie Gressier, Identity and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters, in Illness, Identity, and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-30.
• Dylan Clark, The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine, Ethnology, vol. 43, no. 1, 2004, 1-30.

Further reading:

• Alison Leitch, Slow Food and the Politics of 'Virtuous Globalization', in David Inglis and Debra Gimlin (eds) The Globalization of Food. Oxford: Berg, 2009, 45-64.
• Julie Guthman, Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice. Cultural Geographies, vol. 15, 2008, 431-447.
• Julie Guthman, Can't Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made Me Want to Eat Cheetos. Gastronomica vol. 7, 2007, 75-79.

 

September 14-25: Mid-semester recess.

 

Week 8: Bigger bodies

Thursday October 1

Since the 1990s, the Australian media has talked of an 'obesity crisis'. The lecture will explore various lenses through which to view bigger bodies and through which people with bigger bodies might view themselves. Curves, fat, cellulite – all are attributed different status across cultures and within cultures. Homing in on Australia, we will canvass a public health perspective; and the issue of obesogenic environments. We will consider cultural theorist Lauren Berlant's notion of 'slow death'. And importantly we will learn of the rise of a 'fat pride' movement, which challenges fat shaming and reclaims a range of body sizes as a source of beauty and pleasure.

Required reading:

• Megan Warin, Information is not knowledge: Cooking and eating as skilled practice in Australian obesity education, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2018. vol. 29, 108–124.
• Pierre Bourdieu, excerpts from The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles, In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, 183-186; 193-20.

Further reading:

• Michael Hobbes, Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong, Huffington Post, 2018: https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
• Yates-Doerr, Emily.  The Weight of the Self: Care and Compassion in Guatemalan Dietary Choices, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol.26(1), 2012, 136-158.
• Murray, Samantha. The 'Normal' and the 'Pathological': 'Obesity' and the Dis-eased 'Fat' Body, in The Fat Female Body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 44-68. 
• Lauren Berlant, Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency), Critical Inquiry, vol. 33, no. 4, 2007, 754-780.
• Megan Warin et al.  Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities, Social Science & Medicine, Vol.128, 2015, .309-315.

Week 9. Research Essay Week

Research essays are due on Sunday October 11. There is no lecture or tutorials this week: use the time to focus on your research essay. 

 

Week 10: The way to a person's identity is through their stomach

Thursday October 15

In this lecture Tomas Wilkoszewski will talk about his fieldwork among Uyghur immigrants in Turkey. Tomas will talk about the connection between food and migration. Food not only plays an important role in the migrants' home building, the preparation of food is also a skill that might enable migrant groups to gain a livelihood in the host country. Garnished with examples from Istanbul, Tomas will furthermore discuss the narration as well as the preparation of food as a marker for a distinct nationalism extending an everyday life activity into the realm of political discourses.

Required reading:

• Emma-Jayne Abbots. 'It Doesn't Taste as Good from the Pet Shop': Guinea Pig Consumption and the Performance of Transnational Kin and Class Relations in Highland Ecuador and New York City. Food, Culture & Society, vol.14(2), 2011, 205-223.
• Arjun Appadurai. How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India. Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 30, no. 1, 1988, 3-24. 

Further reading:

• David Sutton. Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory. Oxford: Berg, 2001.
• Roberta James, The reliable beauty of aroma: staples of food and cultural production among Italian-Australians, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 1, 2004, 23-39.
• Mandy Thomas, Transitions in Taste in Vietnam and the Diaspora, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 1, 2004, 54-67.
• Jean Duruz, Eating at the Borders: Culinary Journeys, In Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham (eds), Everyday Multiculturalism, Basingtstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 105-121.
• Ghassan Hage, At Home in the Entrails of the West: Multiculturalism, Ethnic Food and Migrant Home-Building, In H. Grace, G. Hage, L. Johnson, J. Langsworth and M. Symonds (eds), Home/world: Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney’s West, Pluto Press: Annandale, 1997, 99-153.

Week 11. Hunger

Thursday October 22

According to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates, about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, 'were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016'. Global hunger is a serious issue, however it is not our exclusive focus this week. We will explore a broad range of settings and scenarios in which people go hungry. Anthropologist Maggie Dickinson works with recipients of food stamps in New York City. And Megan Warin conducted ethnographic research with anorectics undergoing treatment, in order to understand the meanings they attributed to their own bodies. Fiona Wright explores her own relationship with this illness. An extended reading deals with series of Turkish political prisoners' hunger strikes: you will learn more in the lecture about the history of the hungry body as a political weapon. We are not seeking to compare these experiences of hunger but to learn more about why hunger forms part of the human experience even in societies where access to food is not considered a problem. 

IMPORTANT: The essay by Fiona Wright and the excerpt from Megan Warin are potentially disturbing. You may elect to read the Maggie Dickinson article instead, if you do not wish to read content related to anorexia. Do not hesitate to reach out to Eve if you need support. The Butterfly Foundation has a helpline - a free and confidential service which provides information, counselling and treatment referral for eating disorders, disordered eating, body image and related issues. Call 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673).

Required reading:

• Maggie Dickinson, Working for food stamps: Economic citizenship and the post-Fordist welfare state in New York City. American Ethnologist, 2016, vol. 43, no. 2, 270–281.

OR

• Megan Warin, a short excerpt from Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010,130-134.
• Fiona Wright, On Increments, in Small Acts of Disappearance, Artamon, NSW: Giramondo, 2015, 73-94.

Further reading:

• Susan Bordo, Anorexia Nervosa: Pyschopathology as the Crystallization of Culture, In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
• Banu Bargu, Prisoners in Revolt, in Starve and Immolate, Columbia University Press, 2016.
• Micah Trapp, You-Will-Kill-Me-Beans: Taste and the Politics of Necessity in Humanitarian Aid. Cultural Anthropology, 2016, 31, 412-437.

 

Week 12. Food, cooking, eating and exercise during COVID-19

Thursday October 29

In Week 12 we will turn out attention to the final reflective assessment task. We will discuss COVID-19's relationship to food and eating: from the controversies surrounding wet markets to the panic buying of pasta and the slew of insta posts regarding baking.  

Required reading:

• David Sutton, The Mindful Kitchen, The Embodied Cook, Material Culture Review. 
• Jennifer Lofgren, Food Blogging and Food-relate Media Convergence, M/C Journal.

Further reading:

• Lynn Z. Bloom, Consuming Prose: The Delectable Rhetoric of Food Writing, College English, vol. 70, no. 4, 2008, 346-362.

 

Week 13. Conclusion

Thursday November 5

This concluding lecture will draw together the themes of the course. There are no tutorials this week: the lecture will be delivered in an interactive format.