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Culture, Food, and Talk (ANTH 289)

March 1, 2013

Practicalities Discourse about food

Assignments explained and illustrated:

mealtime discourse project (MDP Step 1) article notes:Jarvenpa

Food as material stuff (nutrients, technology, and

social evolution): Fernandez-Armesto, Pollan,Harris Break: show, tell, and eat (alligator, reindeer, cactus)

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Practicalities Attendance question: Have you ever foraged for your food (e.g., collected

fruit, nuts, mushrooms, herbs, shellfish; gone fishing, hunting, trapping;

dumpster raiding)?

Class time: 10:55-1:35 with 10 min break

Whats on Blackboard so far: syllabus revised slightly last night, course

powerpoints, assignment guidelines (all MDP Steps, consent forms, article

note-taking, food presentation possibilities), dropboxes

Sign-up sheets coming around: film analyses, food presentations, articlepresentations

Third foodways journal entry due on BB today previous ones are all

graded

For Friday 3/1:

Submit your fourth foodways journal entry on BB Read: Clark

Skim: Mead (1), Mintz (8), Lubell

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Syllabus changes

Our final exam date has been set for May

24 @ 11-1, so I have usurped May 17 asour final class day, assuming that this will

not pose any conflicts for you (but let me

know if it does). On the syllabus, everything has been

pushed back one week this includes all

due dates (Ive changed the sign-upsheets to reflect this) EXCEPT the journal

entry due dates please just continue on

with those as originally asterisked

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Food presentation possibilities

(suggest others if you like) Tropics (Oceania, Central Africa, Lowland South America,

Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean): Breadfruit, plantain,

sago, taro, yam, manioc, pig, chicken, peas, sugar cane, collard

greens, okra, mango

Highland South America, Central and North America: Corn,

sweet potatoes, potatoes, quinoa, rabbits, guinea pigs, chili

peppers, chocolate, tomatoes, beans, nopales, agave

Eurasia, Middle-east, North Africa: Wheat, milk, sheep, goat,

horse, cow, cabbage, cucumber, carrot, apple, coffee, salt,beets, garlic, rosemary, oregano/thyme, mint, olives

East Asia: Rice, eggs, frogs, fish, mushrooms, seaweed,

orange, tea, ginger, horseradish, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg,

coriander

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Discourse about food

Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture (American

Museum of Natural History 11/17/12 8/11/13)

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-

exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culture

Addictive junk food, stomach share and bliss pointhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-

extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.htmlhttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culturehttp://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/our-global-kitchen-food-nature-culture

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ANTH 289s food

preferences/prohibitions No meat (vegetarian for moral

reasons)

No beef (Hindu sacred cattle)

Not much red meat or pork

2 No pork (Seventh DayAdventist: unhealthy;

No non-scale fish SDA

prohibition (squid, shrimp,

lobster, oysters),

No fish -- personal smell toostrong

3 No dairy products (lactose

intolerant, 2 personal dislike

(E. Asian))

No cheese

No onions/scallions

(personal dislike of

strong)

No mangos (allergy:mouth and face itchy)

No mushrooms

(allergy: anaphylactic

reactions -- hives,

swelling, death)

No restrictions

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ANTH 289s recommended

eateries Tanling: Samdado Korean (and Japanese)

Restaurant (Bayside, across Horace

Harding Expressway and Springfield

Boulevard)

Manmit: Tanga Asian (fusion India,

Manchuriacurries, noodles, rice)

Queens Blvd and Grand (fresher) or in LIC

Cynthia: Cabana (Cuban), Forest Hills,

Austin or 71st

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Foodways journal entries

Illustrations

Peige

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MDP Step 1 due 3/15

CITI training how many modules are youdoing?

Proposal

Imagining an interesting but practical locale and setof participants

Recruiting your subjects (use script)

Schedule the interviews and the mealtime event

Consent forms

Read adult participant form aloud

Will you be involving minors? Look in advance at

the parent-guardian form and the oral assent form.

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Article note-taking guidelines

(details on BB) Sign up for 10 articles

Take notes on the subjects, settings,

methods, data, findings, theoretical and

local terms, value and validity of the

articles

Hand in your notes (typed, printed, bullet

point format, around 300 words) the day

we discuss the article

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Jarvenpa1. When, where and how does Jarvenpa conduct

his research?

2. What kinds of traditional (bush/country),

nativized, and imported foods do his subjects

(Dene and Finn) eat and how are theyprepared, served and eaten?

3. How do these diets of experience within work

groups, family households, and publicceremonies, operate as symbolic mediation,

allowing them to express social identities, local

knowledge, or resistance to supra-local forces?

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Jarvenpa, Robert (2008) Diets of Experience: Food Culture and Political Ecology in

Northern Canada and Northern Finland. Food and Foodways 16:1-32

s/s: 1971-92 hunting/fishing Kesyehotine Chipeweyan (Dene) Indians (Patuanak, Saskatchewan, northern Canada on the trail, in a

home, at the school); and early 80s-1999, dairy farmer/forestry workers (Suomussalmi, Kainuu Province, northeastern Finland, hay-making

bogfields, lunch at home, homestead on midsummer nights eve)

m/d: observation via active participation or immersion in food procuring/preparing/consuming practices (as a hunting/fishing partner among

Dene and a farm laborer among Finns) as well as interviews, questionnaires, mapping, etc. (observations, narratives, menus, quotes)

Findings:

Both groups use fewer and more bush or traditional foods, cooked in a more traditional manner, in the work groups and to some

degree the family settings; traditional foods represent ecological knowledge and thus diets of experience and yet are lacki ng from

larger scale public performances of identity

Both groups use many more imported foods and preparations in the ceremonials settings; these imported food s represent tensions

due to changing supra-local social relations ambivalent contact with Cree (who fry meat instead of boiling/roasting it), and with

school and church for the Dene (older generations cant stomach new foods, served in a new setting by youth -- a reversal of

traditional means); for the Finns, the cosmopolitan foods represent contact with urban centers (youth drawn there, young women

resisting agricultural work, deserting farms)

Bannock and lard are nativized foreign foods for the Dene; coffee is the nativized food for the Finns both are served in specific

settings, reflecting the process by which local communities resist yet adapt to supra-local forces

women do more of the food preparation and service in both groups, women do some of the same productive labor (fishing/trapping or

barn work), and Finnish men do some of the service in the ceremonial settings (gendered food cultures?)

Theory and local terms

Political ecology = the study of how local adaptations to the environment confront supra-local political-economic forces

Diets of experience (Dove) = food production/processing/consumption used as a way to resolve experiential contradictions between

past traditions and present impositions (old foods retained in the midst of new food patterns) Food as code (Douglas) = food is a symbolic system that allows people to express and negotiate identity and other symbolic issues

(resisting or excluding encroaching forces)

Mediating foods (Power & Power) external foods adopted and nativized by a group in ways that allow for a kind of symbolic

processing of the tensions between the dominant political economy and the subordinate local community

Commensal units = social groupings that engage in specific types of food events (on-site meals by work crews/task groups, meals

prepared and served within family household s, and ceremonial meals prepared and consumed in public)

Local terms: etsins = dried food (Dene), inkonze = animal power (Dene), juustoleipa = cheese bread (Finn), salaati = salad (Finn),

v/v: great ethnographic descriptions and initial analyses, but the final points about how food operates to negotiate political ecological

contraditions are sketchy and unsubstantiated

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Break (show and tell and eat)

Foragers: hunting large game (reindeer, buffalo,

alligator, kangaroo, ostrich)

Distribution: small-scale societies (bands)

exchanged food via kinship and labor

connections and at larger scale inter-band ritual

occasions

Processing/storage: drying and smoking fish,

meat, fruits (jerky)

Consumption: at the hearth, hands and knives,

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Dried game and pickled plants(caution: very superficial Wikipedia research)

Kangaroo (Australia)

hunted by Australian aborigines and eaten now by Australians (ground up or

cubed as beef/lamb would be)

Environmentally correct: less methane

Nutritious: more protein and less fat, anti-carcinogenic and anti-diabetes

Ostrich (Africa) Hunted for millenina (meat and feathers), nearly extinct in 18th c, but farmed

since 19th c.

Nutrition: low fat, high in protein, calcium, iron

Alligator (US and China)

Hunted by Seminoles? Farmed in the 20th c. in the US

Used in Cajun and Chinese cuisines

Chinese medicines

Caribou/reindeer (Arctic/Subarctic)

Hunted since Mesolithic and still by Inuit, herded by Sami for milk and meat,

farmed now

Scandinavian cuisine: dried and smoked, sauteed, sausage, canned meatballs

Nutrition: low fat

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Cactus: Opuntia, nopal(es),

prickly pear (fruit and paddles) Origins: Mexico Nutrition: anti-diabetes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia

http://www.desertusa.com/magoct97/oct

_pa/du_prkpear.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nopal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntiahttp://www.desertusa.com/magoct97/oct_pa/du_prkpear.htmlhttp://www.desertusa.com/magoct97/oct_pa/du_prkpear.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nopalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nopalhttp://www.desertusa.com/magoct97/oct_pa/du_prkpear.htmlhttp://www.desertusa.com/magoct97/oct_pa/du_prkpear.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia

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Break (and eat)

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Food as nutrients

(the material dimension of foodways)

As biological creatures, humans need to eat to work,to grow, to heal (energy, nutrients, medicine) andso have engaged in diverse material practicesthroughout evolutionary time and around the world: Procuring food: foraging = gathering, scavenging, or hunting

flora and fauna Producing food: agriculture, animal husbandry, laboratory

GMOs and chemical flavors

Processing food (e.g., beets to sugar, grapes to wine)

Preparing food (roasting, baking, boiling, fermenting)

Distributing food (bartering, markets, flown in fresh sushi,iceberg lettuce, CSA)

Packaging and storing food (calabashes, plastic bags)

Consume (chopsticks, couches, TVs, subway)

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Diamond, Jared M. (2005) Guns, germs, and steel: the

fates of human societiesNew York : Norton. HM206 .D48Entire film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c63qKwHhPQQ (1h49m)

Episode 1: Out of Eden1. Why inequality? (8:03)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&feature=related

2. Hunter-gatherers -- PNG (9:43)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-ina_bhJ0&feature=related

3. Agricultural beginnings (8:38)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxHZPdH690&feature=related

-- wheat and barley in Mid-East

-- rice in China

-- corn in Americas

-- millet, sorghum, yams in Africa

-- taro, bananas, (spiders) in PNG 10,000 ya

4. Mid-east husbandry, sheep/goats milkand meat (8:25)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRG7-282QXM&feature=related

5. towns, diversified labor, specialistsbased on food surpluses (9:19)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0edh5Itvhy8&feature=related

-- husbandry v. insects, elephants, horses, camels,

-- mideast: cows, pigs, sheep, goats

-- fire => steel

6. Intensive agriculture, overexploitedenvironment, diffusion, artists,expansion, industrial revolution (9:49)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHs_1_xCN8&feature=related

Episode 2: Conquest

7. Spanish Conquest 1532http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuD4vchi3ho&feature=related

Episode 3: Into the Tropics13. Why germs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC76ywLyBvE&feature=related

Geography determines everything??

What about culture and agency??!

F d A t Wh F ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c63qKwHhPQQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-ina_bhJ0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-ina_bhJ0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxHZPdH690&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxHZPdH690&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRG7-282QXM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRG7-282QXM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0edh5Itvhy8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0edh5Itvhy8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHs_1_xCN8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHs_1_xCN8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuD4vchi3ho&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuD4vchi3ho&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC76ywLyBvE&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC76ywLyBvE&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC76ywLyBvE&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC76ywLyBvE&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuD4vchi3ho&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuD4vchi3ho&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHs_1_xCN8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHs_1_xCN8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0edh5Itvhy8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0edh5Itvhy8&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRG7-282QXM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRG7-282QXM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRG7-282QXM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxHZPdH690&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxHZPdH690&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-ina_bhJ0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-ina_bhJ0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-ina_bhJ0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c63qKwHhPQQ

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Fernando-Armesto: Why Farm?

(given the advantages of foraging)http://www.pearsonhighered.com/showcase/armesto2e/assets/armesto_ch2.pdf

What are the pluses and minuses? (p. 38 comparison chart)

Animal husbandry (herding) increases docility and availability of food animals, but animal-driven human

diseases thrive

Plant husbandry (agriculture) is a lot more work than foraging and upsets the environmental balance, but

in changing climates, farming allows for some control (unnatural selection, conveniently located and

timed)

Husbandry drives population increase and more complex systems of communication, food distribution,

specialized labor, political controlwhich easily go off-kilter, resulting in social inequality and instability,

disease and famine

Environments were differentially fit for herding and tillers

Herding (grasslands, northern tundra and evergreen forests soil untillable)they dont settle though

they have been known to create great monuments (central Asia)

Agriculture: 15000 ya healthy, foraging settlements were thriving in the Mediterranean, Japan (fish, nuts,

seeds): swamps (Ganges, PNG, Cameroon), highlands (Oaxaca, Andes), floodplains (Jordan, Yangtze)

Why did farming begin?

Population growth and pressure probably a consequence more than a cause Abundance and so experimentationbut why do MORE work if you dont have to?

Politics leaders require more production for competitive feasting with which to show off status

Religion husbandry = worship (fencing, sowing, watering, sacrificing to the gods of plenty; incense,

drugs, alcohol -- eucharist made of wheat)

Environmental changes (mini-ice ages and droughts in the Mid-East, nut trees receded, grains

flourished in the dry heat)

Accidentprimitives incapable of forethought? An attempt to conserve old ways of life

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/showcase/armesto2e/assets/armesto_ch2.pdfhttp://www.pearsonhighered.com/showcase/armesto2e/assets/armesto_ch2.pdf

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Harris (1985): The Abominable Pig

Harris, the great materialist, abominates symbolic explanations for food preferences

and prohibitions

Jews and Muslims did not abominate pork becausea) theyre unclean (eat dung, wallow in mud other domesticated animals do this

chickens, dogs),

b) they cause disease (other undercooked meats also cause disease),

c) pigs were somehow out of place in their animal taxonomies and so

impure the explanation he really scorns (Douglas) Though pigs convert plants into meat better than any other animal, they pose

problems in the ecological niches created by the end of the ice ages in the Middle

East whereas goats, sheep, and cattle were better suited pigs need human food,

not grasses (theyre not ruminants), and they need shade and moisture (they dont

sweat, get sunstroke). Thus, herding pigs in the Middle East and North Africa was

maintained only in the woody margins as even the elite gave up eating them overtime (the stigmatized pig-herders provided them at first, but the masses werent

happy). Eventually Islam only spread to the limits of the forested parts of the world

(China, Europe) though they sometimes sent in their goats to deforest at the

margins.

The great religions of the world dont impose rules on peoples that will make getting

a nutritious meal impossible, but instead reflect the realities of their prior foodways