Putting Food on the Table:

Rethinking the Culture and Nature

Problematic in Light of the

Sociology of Food

Elisha Vlaholias

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Honours Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Sociology

20th July 2012

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We should look for someone to eat and drink

with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or a wolf.

-Epicurus, BC 341-270

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ABSTRACT

Food is emerging as an important aspect of environmental problems, and, perhaps in an

interrelated fashion, an incipient field of debate in sociology. However scholarly responses

to food as an environmental issue, sociological or otherwise, have hitherto commonly

viewed food as an 'ingredient' of larger environmental concerns, rather than a matter to be

focused on in its own right. In this way environmental sociology is like a cooking recipe,

which asks you to 'add food and stir' without questioning the very recipe, or in this case the

theoretical framework itself. Yet as theoretical understandings underpin both social

practices and sociological research, it is essential that such theories be problematised and

debated as new issues come to light. This is what the present thesis proposes to do.

This thesis comprises the first stage of a larger research programme. Its overarching

premise is that the social category and cultural meanings of food must be integrated into

any future environmental sociology. However as a first step the current study limits its

focus to the interrogation of theoretical frameworks underpinning the sociology of the

environment and the emerging sociology of food, which are articulated as responses to the

nature/culture problematic in modernity. Since 'food' is inherently and simultaneously

'natural' and 'cultural' it problematises the nature/culture divide in a new way that requires

further inspection. For this reason this project takes food as a heuristic tool to

reproblematise and rearticulate the nature/culture divide that underpins social theoretical

frameworks of the environment.

The overall aim of this thesis is to critically engage with two ‘case studies’ in social theory

(authored by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Klaus Eder respectively) that have considered food

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as a central social category in relation to the culture/nature divide. The purpose of this

comparison is to critically analyse and extract valuable insights from these texts that will be

rethought and reconstructed to consider the implications they might have towards the

development of a new conceptual framework. This new framework will examine the

cultural meanings of food, and understand food as a serious environmental issue, which

intersects both the broader industrial sphere and our everyday lives. This thesis thus

provides a preliminary step towards an environmental sociology of food.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to thank several people who, in one way or another, contributed and

extended their valuable assistance in the preparation and completion of this thesis.

It is difficult to overstate my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Suzi Adams, without

her support, inspiration, masterly explanations, and valuable feedback this thesis would not

have been possible. In particular I wish to express my deepest thanks for her extraordinary

patience as the preparation of this thesis overshot numerous deadlines.

I wish to thank my friends for their encouraging messages and for understanding my

absence whilst in my “study cave”.

Special thanks goes to my dearest sister, Naomi Vlaholias, for her camaraderie, skilful

tech-support, and diligent editing, not only of this thesis, but my many undergraduate

essays too.

I would also like to thank Elyse Aird and Shaileigh Page for their enthusiasm,

encouragement, and proofreading that helped to polish this work.

Last but not least, my parents, Nick Vlaholias and Rebecca Vlaholias, for their love and

support throughout all my studies. I would like to particularly thank my dad for his daily

cheerful encouragement, let’s hope I am indeed “on a winner”. Finally, I am indebted to

my mum for her endless support and for keenly discussing and listening to all my ideas and

rants about the modern food system over countless cups of tea.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction: An Appetiser 6

Overview and Summary of Chapters…………………………………………................8 Methodology………………………………………………….......................................11 A Note on Terminology………………………………………………………..............15

Chapter 1: What’s Cooking? Nature, the Environment, and Food in Sociology 18

The Sociology of Nature……………………………………………………………….20 Environmental Sociology………………………………………………………………27 The Sociology of Food…………………………………………………………………30

Chapter 2: The Structuralist Language of Food: Claude Lévi-Strauss 39

Intellectual Biography………………………………………………………………….40 The Raw and the Cooked………………………………………………………………49 The Culinary Triangle………………………………………………………………….54

Chapter 3: The Symbolic Frameworks of Food: Klaus Eder 65

Intellectual Sources…………………………………………………………………….66 The Social Construction of Nature……………………………………………..……....69 Culinary Morality……………………………………………………...……….............80

Conclusions and Future Directions: The Elementary Forms of Food 86

Claude Lévi-Strauss…………………………………………………………………....88 Klaus Eder……………………………………………………………………………...91 Civilisation and Kultur………………………………………………………………....94

Bibliography 99

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INTRODUCTION: An Appetiser

In the last century the modern food system has become one of the largest global industries

with world food exports estimated to be over US$1026 billion in 2010 (Department of

Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 2010, p.21).1 The food industry is a prime source of

profit, export, and employment, which involves a wide variety of stakeholders, such as

corporations, government agencies, unions, consumer groups, and health professionals

(Germov & Williams 2008, p.11). A concerning factor of the modern food system is that it

is dominated by Northern industrialised countries, and many of these key players have very

different interests (Beardsworth & Keil 1997; Dowler et al. 2009). The consequence of this

issue is that food is becoming an ‘industrialised product of global capitalism’ (Dowler et al.

2009, p.200). This shift has brought attention to the alarming reality of the modern food

system’s contribution to environmental problems, including greenhouse gas emissions, the

depletion of water, oil, and other vital resources. This shift has also led to predictions about

the effect of climate change on future food production (Dowler et al. 2009; Ericksen 2008;

Garnett 2008; Leahy 2008; Pretty et al. 2005).

The modern food system is progressively distancing nature from culture by encouraging

society to view the natural environment as an array of commodities and an infinite

resource.2 Many approaches to the environmental problems of the modern food system

have focused on economic and technological-based aspects. However this thesis argues

that changing practices can only occur if we investigate the underlying constitutions of

meanings concerning food that inform our changing social practices at a core level.

Understanding food as a social and cultural category is important because environmental

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issues, such as ozone depletion, deforestation, and wildlife conservation can seem distant

and removed from everyday life, whereas the consumption of food is an activity that all

humans (ideally) engage in daily.3 This daily interaction with food makes environmental

problems more relevant, immediate, and accessible to people than the abstract and

distanced environmental issues mentioned above.

Food is significant because it is the ‘most elementary and simultaneously the most ‘social’

level of interaction with nature’ (Eder 1996 [1988], p.viii). The significance of food has

been recognised by some of the classical sociologists. For instance, Georg Simmel

explains that:

The fact we must eat is such a primitive and low-level fact in the development

of our life values, that it is without question something every individual has in

common with every other one. This is what makes gathering for a common

meal possible, and the overcoming of the mere naturalism of eating develops

on socialization mediated in this way. If eating were not such a low-level thing

it would not have found the bridge over which it rises to the significance of the

sacrificial meal, to the stylization and aestheticization of its ultimate forms

(Simmel 1957, p.250).

Cooking and eating are tasks that hold an importance far greater than simply fulfilling

physiological needs; they also represent a social activity and cultural form.4 This is evident

in research from social anthropology (see Douglas 1984; Goody 1982; Kuper 1997), which

reveals that ‘a commonly shared symbolic world is produced and reproduced’ (Eder 1996

[1988], p.ix) in the universal act of cooking and eating daily (Lévi-Strauss 1970 [1964]).5

Food is a powerful symbolic form that is established by assumed patterns of knowledge

that are spoken through the expression of norms when we consume food daily (Goody

1982). It is evident that ‘food’ is a subject of great cultural significance, but at the same

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time it is essential to, and has numerous consequences for the natural environment (Taylor

2012).

Overview and Summary of Chapters

Food is becoming a significant feature of environmental problems, and, possibly in a

related manner, an emerging field of debate in sociology. However academic responses to

food as an environmental issue, sociological or otherwise, have thus far generally examined

food as an 'ingredient' of larger environmental concerns, rather than a matter to be focused

on in its own right. In this vein environmental sociology is like a cooking recipe, which

asks you to 'add food and stir' without questioning the very recipe, or in this case the

conceptual framework itself. However, because theoretical understandings underpin both

sociological research and social practices, it is critical that such theories be problematised

and debated as new issues come to light. This is what the present thesis aims to do.

This thesis is the initial stage of a larger research project. Its overarching premise is that

the social category and cultural meanings of food need to be included in any future

environmental sociology. Although as a preliminary step, the current study restricts its

scope to the examination of theoretical frameworks underpinning the sociology of the

environment and the emerging sociology of food, which are articulated as responses to the

nature/culture problematic in modernity. Since 'food' is essentially and simultaneously

'natural' and 'cultural' it problematises the nature/culture divide in a new way that requires

further inquiry. Therefore this thesis takes food as a heuristic tool to reproblematise and

rearticulate the nature/culture divide that underlines social theoretical frameworks of the

environment.

9

The overall intention of this thesis is to critically analyse two ‘case studies’ in social theory

(authored by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Klaus Eder respectively) that have studied food as a

major social category in relation to the nature/culture dualism. The purpose of this

comparison is to draw out and critically evaluate valuable insights from these texts that will

be rethought and reconstructed to consider the consequences they might have towards the

development of a new conceptual framework. This new framework will examine the

cultural meanings of food, and understand food as a serious environmental issue that

bridges the broader industrial sphere and our everyday lives. Hence this thesis provides a

first step towards an environmental sociology of food.

The current thesis specifically asks: ‘How can the social category of ‘food’ help to

problematise the meanings of the nature/culture divide in modern society?’. Rethinking the

nature/culture divide is important because understandings and interpretations of the

culture/nature divide vary in time and space, and inform our social practices and encounters

with our natural environment. The underlying social interpretations of the nature/culture

divide are not often made explicit, but as this project ultimately aims to develop a new

theoretical framework, these understandings need to be made explicit and problematised.

To this end this thesis must be seen as the first step of a larger research programme that

ultimately aims to develop an environmental sociology of food. An environmental

sociology of food will contribute to the rethinking of broader theoretical frameworks in

social theory and environmental sociology. It is a preparatory step to reinterpreting and

reproblematising concrete social practices and cultural meanings concerning food and the

environment, which are needed for social change.

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The necessity of an environmental sociology of food will become much clearer in chapter

one, which will review the relevant literature from the sociology of nature, environmental

sociology, and the sociology of food. It will show that the sociology of nature was

developed as a response to the nature/culture divide in sociology, but it has neglected to

examine food as an important feature of this divide. The consequence of this inattention to

food is that the sociology of nature has strived to transcend the nature/culture dualism,

whereas by reproblematising the nature/culture divide with the social category food as a

central lens, the nature/culture divide does not need to be overcome. Instead the

nature/culture divide can become less of a dichotomy and more of an interplay that will

engage in both social constructionist and critical realist perspectives. The literature review

will also show that the sociology of food and environmental sociology have made

significant contributions to the sociological study of food. However neither field has

closely examined the concrete social practices, and the cultural meanings of food as an

environmental issue.

In chapter two the first case study is presented, which will hermeneutically reconstruct

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked (1970 [1964]) and his related essay ‘The

culinary triangle’ (1966a). Specifically this chapter will consider Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual

sources, and will examine his structuralist approach that he used to develop his culinary

triangle. From this understanding Lévi-Strauss’s culinary triangle and his distinction

between nature and culture will be critically analysed to segue into chapter three.

In chapter three Klaus Eder’s The Social Construction of Nature (1996 [1988]) will be

critically analysed as the second case study of this thesis. This chapter will situate Eder’s

work into the wider debates of modernity and critical theory, and it will analyse Eder’s

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social constructionist approach to nature. From this perspective it will consider how Eder

links his interpretation of the relationship between nature, culture, and society to the

environmental problems of modern industrial societies, which will set a firm foundation for

the concluding discussion.

The concluding chapter, ‘The Elementary Forms of Food’, will critically analyse Lévi-

Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked (1970 [1964]) and his ‘The culinary triangle’ (1966a)

together with Eder’s The Social Construction of Nature (1996 [1988]). It will extract

important insights from both of these texts, which will be rethought to consider how they

may contribute towards elaborating a conceptual framework for an environmental

sociology of food. As a result this thesis will establish the centrality of food in rethinking

the nature/culture divide, and it will determine that the social category and cultural

meanings of food problematises the nature/culture divide in a new way. The present thesis

will conclude by considering the future potential of this renewed problematic for both

theory and practice in modern society.

Methodology

This thesis will conduct a hermeneutical reconstruction of selected works by Lévi-Strauss

and Klaus Eder. Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s texts have been included for analysis because

they are two of the few works that explicitly consider the nature/culture divide and

recognise ‘food’ as a central category in their respective analyses.6 The present thesis

employs the methodology of textual analysis that draws on techniques from hermeneutics,

and also engages in the emancipatory intent of critical social theory. Hermeneutics and

critical social theory are contested theoretical approaches, and so it is important to clarify

and explain how these methods will be utilised in this thesis.

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Hermeneutics is the art and/or science of interpretation, which is primarily concerned with

analysing and deciphering the meaning of a text (Bauman 1978; Harvey & Myers 1995;

Radnitzky 1970). Although in the twentieth century it expanded beyond textual analysis

alone. It has a long history and was originally used to identify the truth and authenticity of

Biblical interpretations (Bauman 1978, p.1). Since then various forms of hermeneutics

have emerged, and these diverse approaches have been questioned and widely debated (see

Gadamer 1976; Habermas 1978; Ricoeur 1974; Thompson 1981). The twentieth century

saw the shift from hermeneutics as textual analysis to a hermeneutics that encompassed a

broader ‘philosophical hermeneutics’ (see Gadamer 1976, 1979a; Heidegger 1999; Ricoeur

1974), and later to a ‘cultural hermeneutics’ found in some forms of interpretative and/or

cultural sociology (see Bauman 1978; Alexander 2003, 2007; Alexander & Smith 2001;

Arnason 1988). The hermeneutical differences between Paul Ricoeur (1974, 1981, 1991

[1986]) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1976, 1979a, 1979b, 2006 [1970]) are important to the

methodology of this thesis, therefore a discussion of their perspectives is necessary at this

point.

Gadamer’s understanding of hermeneutics resulted from his critique of the earlier works of

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1987) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1989). Schleiermacher and Dilthey

subscribed to a form of ‘pure hermeneutics’, in which the interpreter needs to place

themselves in ‘the mind’ of the author to recover the original intention and correct meaning

of the text (Schleiermacher 1987; Dilthey 1989). Gadamer disagreed with this notion and

argued that hermeneutics ‘is not a matter of penetrating the spiritual activities of the author;

it is simply a question of grasping the meaning, significance, and aim of what is transmitted

to us’ (1979a, p.147). Gadamer believed that a text must preserve its relationship to the

author’s perspective, which is distinct to Ricoeur’s understanding of hermeneutics. Ricoeur

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argued that there is an essential difference between the hermeneutical tasks of written and

conscious communication (1991 [1986], p.107). He suggested that the text is considered as

an object of study separate from the author’s intentions. He perceived texts to be ‘full of

meaning, charged with latent philosophies’ (Ricoeur in Lévi-Strauss 1970 [1963]).7 This

is a central idea of critical hermeneutics, which argues that texts should no longer be

interpreted as closed or true forms. On the contrary, the task of interpretation always

remains open and available to various understandings, to such an extent that hermeneutic

interpretation is potentially infinite (Taylor 1985).

This thesis resonates more strongly with Ricoeur’s hermeneutic approach than Gadamer’s

perspective. It seeks to critically interpret the selected texts of Lévi-Strauss and Eder,

rather than producing a commentary or exegesis of them. The present thesis interprets texts

as autonomous and independent from the author’s erstwhile intentions. Hence it will

critically engage with Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s respective works in a way that may exceed

their ‘explicit intentions and open up areas of discussion to which, at first glance, they may

not readily lend themselves’ (Adams 2011, p.12). This method is evident in the concluding

discussion, in which valuable insights will be extracted from Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s texts.

Their ideas will be rethought as a first step towards developing a theoretical framework

more adequate in elaborating an environmental sociology of food. An environmental

sociology of food will have theoretical consequences and practical implications for modern

society, and in this way it draws on the emancipatory approach of critical social theory.

Critical social theory emerged during the Enlightenment and it has continued to exist

predominately in European scholarship (Elliott 2009, p.xiii). It is a wide-ranging

endeavour that questions and ‘opens up’ the very giveness of the social world, and our

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lives, to critical analysis and appraisal (Calhoun 1995; Elliott 2010). Calhoun states that

the main goal of critical social theory is to ask questions and move beyond the familiar

world, to discover new perspectives and possibilities of what society could be (1995, pp.1-

2). This central purpose stems from the work of German neo-Marxist academics of the

‘Frankfurt School’ (see Adorno & Horkheimer 2002 [1944]; Habermas 1989; Marcuse

1986).8 Critical theorists refuted traditional theory and the way it focused purely on

explaining and understanding society. In contrast they argued that the way the world is,

and the way we view the world, is a reciprocal relationship that influences and directs each

other. The Frankfurt School’s critical theory had a unique approach to social research,

because it sought to bring about emancipation and change to society as a whole.

This understanding of critical theory emanated, to a great extent, from Karl Marx’s use of

the term ‘critique’ in Capital (Marx 1954 [1893]). Marx established the idea of ‘critique’

as the critique of ideology, and he connected it to the practice of social revolution. This is

clear in his famous eleven ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in which he argues that, ‘The

philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is, to change it’ (Marx &

Engels 1970 [1845], p.199). Marx’s ‘Eleventh Thesis’ is an age-old call for the social

theorist’s responsibility to do more than think about the world; they also need to inform

action (Lemert 2010, p.283). The purpose of critical social theory is not to simply diagnose

the ills of modern society, but to help change society for the better by discovering its

progressive features and dispositions (Carr 2000; Geuss 1981). In a similar vein, the

present thesis emerged from a critique of the environmental ills of the modern food system.

This thesis will now interrogate the meanings of the nature/culture divide with the social

category of food as a first step towards developing an environmental sociology of food. An

environmental sociology of food will have theoretical consequences, but it will also offer

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practical perspectives for modern society. As a result this thesis, and the future research

programme it proposes, adopts the methodology of critical social theory in conjunction

with hermeneutics to bridge theory with concrete issues of public concern.

A Note on Terminology

The fields of the sociology of nature, environmental sociology, and the sociology of food

are not only characterised by various theoretical approaches, but also by a variety of

terminology that can be ambiguous. In particular the ‘modern food system’ is a term that

has been widely used to conceptualise the full scope of the food industry. It encompasses a

series of processes involved in transforming raw materials into foods, and is often

described by phrases such as ‘from field to table’ or ‘farm to plate’ (Kneen 1989; Sobal,

Khan & Bisogni 1998). Food system models have been developed as conceptual tools for

analysing the relations between agricultural, industrial, economic, ecological, social, health,

and other aspects of food and nutrition (Beardsworth & Keil 1997; Germov & Williams

2008; Sobal et al. 1998). A variety of models have been developed that focus on various

aspects of the food industry: food chains (see Austin & Zeitlin 1981; Blanford, Carter &

Piggott 1993; Hitchcock 1980; King & Burgess 1993; Marion 1986); food webs (see

Senauer 1992; Silverstein 1984); food contexts (see Bowler 1992; Burns, McInerney &

Swinbank 1983); and food cycles (see Kim & Curry 1993; Kramer 1973). However these

food models often simplify the processes involved in the production, distribution, and

consumption of food, and generally fail to account for global, political, cultural, and

environmental concerns (Germov & Williams 2008, pp.11-12).

For this reason the current thesis applies the term ‘modern food system’ with reference to

Geoff Tansey and Tony Worsley’s definition (1995). The modern food system

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conceptualises the connections between three distinct aspects of life: first, biological: the

living processes to produce food and their ecological sustainability; second, economic and

political: the power and control which different groups exert over the different parts of the

system; and third, social and cultural: the personal relations, community values, and

cultural traditions which affect people’s use of food (Tansey & Worsley 1995, p.2).

Throughout this thesis food is primarily understood as a cultural form. Cultural forms are

interconnected with notions of ‘symbolic forms’, and the most seminal discussions of

‘symbolic forms’ are found in the work of Ernst Cassirer (see Cassirer 1953). Hence, for

the purposes of this thesis ‘cultural form’ and ‘symbolic form’ are used interchangeably.

Furthermore an essential point in the present thesis is that nature and culture are not just

‘things’ or ‘facts’, rather they are always invested with ‘cultural meanings’ that make them

‘real’ to us. Thus reference to the ‘social category of food’ in this thesis actually denotes

‘the cultural meanings of food as a social category’. With this in mind the subsequent

chapter will review the relevant literature from the sociology of nature, environmental

sociology, and the sociology of food to set a firm foundation for the discussion that follows.

1 The term ‘modern food system’ will be defined on p.15. 2 This has been an enduring critical concern in environmental debates (see Castoriadis 1981, 1985; Everdeen 1993; Simmons 1993). 3 Climate change was not added to this list, as in the view of the present writer, climate change is articulated as both ‘distant’ and ‘close’. It is distant in the sense that ordinary people do not feel they can do much to change it, but it is also close because it is experienced and noticed in people’s everyday life (through floods, changing temperatures etc.). 4 Due to the scope of this thesis, the present study will primarily focus on food as a cultural form, i.e. the meanings of food. 5 The terms ‘cultural form’ and ‘symbolic form’ will be discussed on p.16. 6 The work of Ronald Barthes, particularly his essay ‘Towards a psychosociology of contemporary food consumption’ (1997), was considered as an appropriate text for analysis, because in an arguably similar manner to Lévi-Strauss, he examined foods in order to find an underlying code or ‘grammar’ (1997, p.21). During the preliminary stages of this project, the merits of Barthes and Lévi-Strauss’s respective works were assessed in relation to the premise of this study. From this evaluation the present writer decided that Lévi-Strauss’s selected works were most suitable to the

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central question animating this thesis (i.e. How can the social category of food help to problematise the nature/culture divide in modern society?). 7 This discussion of hermeneutics was part of a famous debate published in Esprit (Ricoeur in Lévi-Strauss 1970 [1963]) at the height of structuralism, and on the occasion of Lévi-Strauss’s publication of The Savage Mind (1966b). 8 The critical theory of the first and second generation of the Frankfurt School was a primary intellectual source for Eder, such that he is regarded as part of the third generation (Anderson 2011; Strydom 1993). Hence this discussion will be referred to in the analysis of Eder’s intellectual sources in chapter three.

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CHAPTER 1: What’s Cooking? Nature, the Environment,

and Food in Sociology For many years the nature/culture divide limited sociology’s engagement with anything

beyond the ‘social’. Alan Irwin indicates this was due to the underlying assumption that

nature and society are separable, and therefore social sciences concentrated on all things

‘social’ and left ‘nature’ to the natural sciences (Irwin 2001; Sutton 2004). However in

recent decades the impact of human societies on the natural environment has become a

topic of great sociological interest, to such an extent that nature, the environment, and food

have increasingly emerged as rich fields of study (see, for example, Ferguson & Zukin

1995; Franklin 2002; Johnston & Baumann 2010; Murcott 1983; Sutton 2004; Warde &

Martens 2000). This thesis asks how the social category of food and its various cultural

meanings can help to problematise the meanings of the nature/culture divide in modern

society, and it is a first step towards developing a conceptual framework of an

environmental sociology of food. Its ultimate premise is that food as a social category must

be integrated into any future environmental sociology. However as a preliminary project,

this thesis focuses on the interrogation of theoretical frameworks underpinning the

sociology of the environment and the sociology of food, which are articulated as responses

to the nature/culture problematic in modernity. In turn an environmental sociology of food,

on the one hand, will contribute to the rethinking of theoretical frameworks in social theory

and environmental sociology, and on the other, will help to reinterpret and reproblematise

the concrete social practices and cultural meanings of food and the environment, which is a

necessary precondition of social change.

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The present chapter will review the relevant literature from the sociology of nature,

environmental sociology, and the sociology of food. Firstly it will inspect why historically

‘nature’ was set outside the realm of sociological investigation. This literature review will

examine the different perspectives of the sociology of nature and environmental sociology,

and it will observe the key debates between social constructionists and critical realists. In

light of these debates this chapter will examine ways that sociologists have sought to move

beyond or rethink the nature/culture divide. It will highlight that in these various attempts

‘food’ has been neglected as an important problematic of this dualism. The current chapter

will then consider the relevant literature from environmental sociology, which in many

ways has replaced the sociology of nature. In environmental sociology ‘food’ is emerging

as an important aspect of environmental problems, however it is commonly viewed as an

‘ingredient’ of larger environmental problems, rather than an issue that needs to be focused

on in its own right.

The present literature review will then turn to analyse the sociology of food. It will

consider the production and consumption ‘division of labour’ in the sociology of food

(Tovey 1997), and it will review two works that have set to overcome this division by

examining the nature/culture divide. This chapter will show that although the various

works from the sociology of food emphasise the significance of food, it is not clear that

they are examining ‘food’ in the same way. For this reason the present chapter will argue

that the sociology of food requires a theoretical approach to give the various perspectives a

common framework. The literature review will conclude by indicating the significant

contributions environmental sociology and the sociology of food have made to the

sociological study of food. However it will argue that neither subject has closely

examined the concrete social practices and cultural meanings of food as an environmental

20

issue. ‘Food’ is increasingly viewed as a central aspect of environmental concerns, and so

this thesis will propose that food must be integrated into any future environmental

sociology.

The Sociology of Nature

‘Nature’, as Raymond Williams comments, ‘is perhaps one of the most complex words in

the English language’ (1976, p.217). When one asks ‘What is nature in sociology?’ the

answer is just as problematic, because the concept of nature is unclear and its meanings

have changed throughout history. Neil Everdeen establishes a difference between ‘nature’,

which is used when ‘referring to the great amorphous mass of otherness that encloaks the

planet’, and ‘nature’ when ‘referring specifically to the system or model of nature which

arose in the West several centuries ago’ (1992, p.xi). Kate Soper explains that nature is

differentiated from human and cultural domains, but it is also a concept that allows us to

question the ‘natural or artificial quality of our own behaviour and cultural formations’

(1995, p.2).1 Nature is often opposed or viewed as an ‘other’ to culture, society, and that

which is ‘artificially’ produced. This notion of nature as an ‘other’ to humans and culture

has been manifest in sociology.

As a discipline sociology was created from the historical rise of industrial capitalism in

Western societies. Phil Macnaghten and John Urry explain that sociology’s ‘key concept

has been that of society [and it has] tended to accept certain a priori assumptions about the

consequent relationship between nature and society’ (1995, p.203). Sociology has taken for

granted the triumph of such modern societies in their ‘spectacular overcoming of nature’,

and has concentrated on describing and explaining ‘the very character of modern societies’

(Macnaghten & Urry 1995). They argue that sociology’s historical indifference to nature

21

has been largely due to the academic division of labour, which arose from the Durkheimian

tradition that sought to establish sociology as a separate science of human societies, which

could research and explain the social world autonomously (Macnaghten & Urry 1998, p.5).

A major aspect of this approach was to demonstrate that ‘social facts’ should be elevated

over the lower order facts from psychology or biology.2 The realm of social facts presumed

its distance from, and antithesis to nature (Dickens 1996; Catton & Dunlap 1978;

Macnaghten & Urry 1998). This arguably drew Durkheim and sociologists away from

investigating the relationship between the biological and the social (Sutton 2004). The

academic distinction between a world of social facts and one of natural facts remained

highly uncontested until very recently. The rise in concern for global environmental

problems through new environmentalist movements and green political parties (see

Touraine 1977, 1981) were important developments that encouraged sociologists to assess

their capacity to conceptualise social-natural relations (Sutton 2004, p.5).

In the past three decades sociology’s interest in nature and the environment has expanded,

and it is now a burgeoning field. However for the purposes of the present thesis, this

literature review will limit its focus to the larger theoretical and conceptual understanding

of nature-society relations. It will draw upon Phillip Sutton’s (2004) conceptual distinction

between the sociology of nature and environmental sociology. Sutton’s variation between

the fields is:

For environmental sociologists, the discipline of sociology has to change if it

is to say anything significant about the looming ‘ecological crisis’, whilst for

[sociologists of nature], it is precisely the relatively detached and critical

character of sociology that is potentially able to bring something new to the

study of environmental issues (Sutton 2004, p.9).

22

These perspectives are not necessarily rigid polarised alternatives, however they currently

seem to be producing different perspectives to the study of nature, the environment, and

society. Underlying these fields is the polarised debate between critical realists and social

constructionists, which at this point requires a brief overview.3

Social constructionism is ‘the bread and butter’ of sociology. A general notion of social

constructionism is that our experiences and interpretations of nature are, to a great extent,

socially produced (see Everdeen 1992; Hannigan 2006; Irwin 2001; Macnaghten & Urry

1998; Smith 1997; Tester 1991). 4 However social constructionism is used in a variety of

ways, and so a common distinction has been made between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms of

constructionism. Strong versions of constructionism argue that nature does not exist in an

unmediated form. Furthermore human concepts and theories of nature are open to change,

and so they always require interpretation (Sutton 2004, p.58). An example of this ‘strong’

perspective is Keith Tester’s passage from his work Animals and Society: The Humanity of

Animal Rights, in which he argues:

A fish is only a fish if it is classified as one, and that classification is only

concerned with fish to the extent that [it helps] society define itself…

Animals are indeed a blank paper which can be inscribed with any

message, and symbolic meaning that the social wishes (Tester 1991,

p.46).

Tester rejects the reality of fish and lowers them to the variable meanings and

interpretations that human societies give them. However very few social constructionist

studies of nature and the environment are as extreme as Tester’s perspective (Burningham

& Cooper 1999; Sutton 2004). The majority of social constructionists adopt a ‘weak’

approach that acknowledges that nature does exist independently from humanity’s

23

interpretation, but they maintain that nature and the environment cannot be reduced to that

reality (Hannigan 2006, p.30).

It is the ‘reality of nature’, particularly in regard to real-world environmental issues, that

has caused some environmental sociologists to critique social constructionism for not

providing a ‘solid ground’ to analyse environmental issues. This approach is patent in the

recent work of some British-based sociologists and philosophers who argue for a critical

realist approach to study the relationship between the environment and society (see Benton

1993; Dickens 1996; Soper 1995, 2009). Critical realists are much more assertive about the

natural limits of human intervention and the inescapable reality of the environmental crisis.

Thus they seek to practice an environmental ethics and politics that looks beyond social

relations alone (Franklin 2002, p.6).

There are limitations in both of these ‘deep-rooted’ perspectives, and so several sociologists

have endeavoured to move beyond these positions to develop new ways of investigating

nature and society relations (see Franklin 2002; Freudenburg, Frickel & Gramling 1995;

Goldman & Schurman 2000; Inglis & Bone 2006; Irwin 2001; Macnaghten & Urry 1998).

The general purpose of moving beyond dualistic thinking is to prevent partial knowledge

from one-sided perspectives. Sutton argues that in order to replace this dualism, we require

‘ways of connecting the social and the natural within a single framework that would enable

a new programme for sociologists interested in the environment’ (2004, p.68). This idea is

significant because the present thesis argues that food simultaneously encompasses the

natural and the cultural, thus it can help to better elaborate the nature/culture divide in a

new way. With this in mind the literature review will now assess some leading attempts

that have questioned this divide, and in doing so will extract key ideas and identify gaps in

24

these approaches. This thesis will then seek to fill these gaps by rethinking the culture and

nature divide in modern society, as a first step towards elaborating a conceptual framework

better equipped to address the centrality and meanings of food.

In Macnaghten and Urry’s Contested Natures (1998) they claim to ‘transcend the by now

rather dull debate between ‘realists’ and ‘constructivists’’ (1998, p.2).5 They argue that

there is ‘no singular ‘nature’…only a diversity of contested natures; and that each such

nature is constituted through a variety of socio-cultural processes from which such natures

cannot be plausibly separated’ (Macnaghten & Urry 1998, p.1). Macnaghten and Urry

utilise a historical perspective of nature, such as ‘environment’, ‘countryside’, or

‘wilderness’ to reveal that they are cultural constructs with detailed time and space

aetiologies (1998, p.134). They note that sociology can provide insight into the socially

varied ways that nature and the environment can be viewed, interpreted, and evaluated

(Macnaghten & Urry 1998, p.19). Furthermore they suggest that the role of sociologists

studying nature should focus on ‘embedded social practices’, which ‘structure the

responses of people to what is deemed to be the ‘natural’’ (Macnaghten and Urry 1998).

The majority of their text is devoted to presenting the character and significance of these

social practices, and in doing so they indicate that our engagement with nature is ‘highly

diverse, ambivalent, and embedded in daily life’ (Macnaghten and Urry 1998, p.2).

Macnaghten and Urry’s work is an important account of the nature/culture interface.

However this thesis draws on Adrian Franklin’s critique that Macnaghten and Urry

‘conflate a sociology of nature with a sociology of nature leisure areas and tourism’

(Franklin 2002, p.7). Macnaghten and Urry assert the importance of understanding nature

through ‘embedded social practices’, however they focus on nature in touristic and

25

distanced leisure areas, rather than our daily encounters with nature. Although this thesis

agrees with Macnaghten and Urry’s historical perspective and their emphasis on multiple

natures, it concurs with Franklin’s critique that:

The social accounts of nature understood as environment and tourism fail to

penetrate [the] everyday natures and produce skewed accounts of so called

attitudes and values on the natural world. Of course people will proffer a

view on the rainforests of the tropics, desertification or acid rain in Sweden

and they will have accounts of their occasional trips to more distant natures,

but assuming that nature is a space and zone at one remove from everyday

life is a poor way of understanding people’s relations with the natural world

(Franklin 2002, p.8).

A social account of nature(s) cannot only focus on ‘places of sacred pilgrimage’, rather it

must consider everyday natures (Franklin 2002, p.8). This thesis proposes that the daily

practice of eating food is a significant way to examine how our ‘engagement with nature is

embedded in daily life’ (Macnaghten and Urry 1998, p.2).

Alan Irwin’s Sociology and the Environment (2001) also attempts to go beyond the social

constructionist and critical realist approach. Irwin specifically questions ‘What should the

relationship be between the discipline of sociology and the study of environmental issues,

problems, and concerns?’ (2001, p.viii). In contrast to Macnaghten and Urry’s focus on

social practices, Irwin’s approach considers how hybrid environments are socially

constructed. He draws on a sociology of science perspective to examine the way

environmental problems have a hybrid or co-constructed character, which calls the

social/natural dualism into question (2001, p.26). Irwin’s co-construction approach refers

to the social construction of both the social and the natural. He suggests that researching

environmental issues requires investigating the social and the natural together as part of the

26

same ‘nature-culture nexus’ (Irwin 2001, p.174). Hence Irwin argues that not only does the

social construct the natural, but the social also constructs the social. In essence he argues

for a critical sociology of the environment, because he indicates that ‘ultimately, the

sociological treatment advocated in this book stresses that environmental decisions are at

their core, a matter of social choice…[and] a sociological approach should shed light on

current institutional and technological assumptions’ (2001, p.134). However the role that

Irwin suggests for sociologists is very similar to those offered by other social

constructionist accounts (see Burningham & Cooper 1999; Hannigan 2006). It is unclear

how ‘the natural’ plays an important role in Irwin’s co-construction of environmental

problems. Instead as Sutton explains, ‘what [we see] is the way ‘the social’ constructs both

the social and the natural, making it very difficult to see how ‘nature’ plays any significant

role in the process’ (2004, p.73).

It is evident from this review that Macnaghten and Urry, and Irwin’s approaches do not go

beyond a social constructionist account of nature, and so their attempts to overcome the

nature/culture dualism are limited. Furthermore their responses to the nature/culture divide,

and others from the sociology of nature have neglected to examine food as an important

feature of this divide.6 This thesis therefore seeks to reinterrogate the nature/culture divide

with the social category of food as a central lens. However unlike Irwin, Macnaghten and

Urry, and other theorists that have sought to move beyond the nature/culture dualism, this

project does not seek to overcome this divide. Rather this thesis will argue that the social

category and cultural meanings of food problematises this divide in a new way, such that

the nature/culture divide becomes less of a dichotomy and more of an interplay that will

explore and reinterpret concrete social practices and cultural meanings concerning food and

the environment.

27

Environmental sociology

Recently some sociologists have become increasingly sensitised to the reality of

environmental problems and the ecological crisis. This has led to a reassessment of the

environment as a problem in its own right in sociology. A central part of this reappraisal

was Samuel Klausner’s consideration of sociology’s human exceptionalism doctrine (1971,

p.25). From this perspective Catton and Dunlap developed the term ‘Human

Exceptionalism Paradigm’ (HEP) to refer to traditional sociology’s implicit worldview,

which believed human-environmental relationships were unimportant to sociology because

‘humans are 'exempt' from environmental forces via cultural change’ (1978, p.250). In

contrast to HEP they developed an alternative view termed the ‘New Environmental

Paradigm’ (NEP) to emphasise the ‘eco-system dependence of human-societies’ (Catton &

Dunlap 1978, p.250). The NEP showed that ‘sociology has to take seriously a dilemma

traditionally rejected – human societies necessarily exploit surrounding ecosystems in

order to survive, but societies that flourish to the extent of overexploiting the ecosystem

may destroy the basis of their own survival’ (Catton & Dunlap 1978, p.250). As a result

environmental sociologists began to study the social factors that cause environmental

problems, the social impacts of those problems, and they also offer and critique efforts to

solve environmental problems.

In the 1990s the development of environmental sociology saw the long-standing debate

between social constructionists and critical realists begin to settle. Both positions came to

accept the reality of environmental problems, even though our awareness of environmental

issues arose from scientific research, media attention, and activism from environmental

movements (Buttel 1987; Harper 2001; Pepper 1996). As a result of these shifts, the

sociology of nature was generally replaced by environmental sociology. Environmental

28

sociology has ‘bloomed’ into a burgeoning field that examines nature and the environment

differently to the work considered in this chapter hitherto. However these works exceed the

horizon of this thesis, and will only be given a brief consideration.

Several theorists have studied public attitudes towards specific environmental problems

(see Dowler et al. 2009; Murch 1971). Environmental movements have been a central

topic of concern in many sociological studies (see Touraine 1977, 1981). Furthermore

ecofeminist theories have explored the relationship between women and nature as a central

theme (see Daly 1979; Gaard 1993; Griffin 1980; Haraway 1991). The concept of risk and

environmental problems has also been considered as an important issue in social theory

(see Beck 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1999; Goldblatt 1996; Lash & Urry 1994). Others have

been interested in green politics as a form of postmodern politics (Coates 1998; Gare 1995).

Sociologists have also recently made significant contributions to the study of climate

change (see Giddens 2009; Lever-Tracy 2008; Lever-Tracy & Pittock 2010; Urry 2010a,

2010b, 2011).

It is clear from the variety of literature mentioned above that interest in nature and

environmental issues has expanded rapidly. This literature review will now consider how

environmental sociologists have discussed the topic of food in order to identify gaps in the

literature. Recent works have considered how the application of new biotechnologies,

particularly those related to agricultural production and food (genetically modified food

products), have led to new challenges for environmental movements (see Kousis 2010;

Lezaun 2004; Schurman 2004). Food has also been a central aspect of work on sustainable

consumption. Environmental sociologists have examined the rise of fair trade food

products and energy-saving light bulbs as emerging forms of ‘green govermentality’

29

(Rutherford 2007). They have also questioned how sustainable consumption should be

governed, as it has become ‘fashionable’ in Western societies, but is ‘deeply marred by the

continuing inequalities inherent in its uptake’ (Hinton & Goodman 2010, p.245; Fuchs &

Lorek 2005; Goodman 1999; Trentmann 2007). The relationship between animals and

human culture in terms of food products has also arisen as an important topic for

sociological analysis. Environmental sociologists have considered how the global

consumption of meat and the rearing of animals as livestock reveal something about human

society’s relationship with non-human animals (see Cudworth 2003; Franklin 1999; Tovey

2003; Warde 1997). Furthermore several works have studied how the culture of meat-

eating has accelerated contemporary environmental problems, including climate change

(see Pimental & Pimental 2003; Taylor 2012).

It is evident from the literature considered above that food in environmental sociology is

budding as an important aspect of environmental concerns. However this thesis argues that

in these approaches food is commonly viewed as an ‘ingredient’ of larger environmental

problems rather than an issue to be focused on in its own right. In this way environmental

sociology is like a cooking recipe which asks you to ‘add food and stir’ without questioning

the very recipe, or in this case the theoretical framework itself. The present thesis therefore

argues that an environmental sociology of food is required to examine food as a serious

environmental issue that intersects both the broader industrial sphere and our everyday

lives. In order to achieve this it must reinterpret and reproblematise concrete social

practices and cultural meanings concerning food and the environment. Food must be

integrated into any future environmental sociology. However as this thesis seeks to rethink

the culture and nature divide in light of the sociology of food, this chapter will now turn to

consider this emerging field.

30

The Sociology of Food

‘Food’ is a complex and multi-faceted issue with enormous cultural significance. Food

products themselves shift from ‘agriculture to culture, from farm to plate, from eating to a

meal’ (Ferguson 2005, p.700). Each of these movements require sociological analysis as

they all traverse broader social issues including, government regulation, production and

consumption, labour and gender, and the social relations of immigration (see Belasco 2002;

Germov & Williams 2008; Mintz 2002; Ward, Coveney & Henderson 2010; Wendell

1981). These matters are of great sociological interest because they are central to the

development, structure, and functioning of society. John Germov and Lauren Williams

explain that a sociological study of food generally examines:

The role played by the social environment in which food is produced

and consumed. This does not mean that individual choice and personal

taste play no role. Rather, because social patterns in food habits exist, a

sociological explanation is helpful in understanding the social determinants

of why we eat the way we do (Germov & Williams 2008, p.6).

However only a short time ago the sociological imagination did not spare much thought for

food. In view of this ‘glut’ of knowledge ‘ripe’ for the sociological ‘picking’, this literature

review must first question: Why has the sociology of food been neglected for so long?

(Ferguson 2005; Ferguson & Zukin 1995; Johnston & Baumann 2010; Murcott 1982, 1983;

Warde & Martens 2000). A central reason for sociology’s limited engagement with food is

largely due to the nature/culture divide that was discussed earlier. In this vein Deane

Curtin and Lisa Heldke (1992) suggest that the lack of sociological interest in food may

have derived from the Western intellectual dualism that emphasises cognition over

embodiment, and depreciates the material and practical nature of human life. This dualism

has a gendered dimension, as the sphere of food was once regarded as part of the private

and supposedly less salient world of women, such that food was only considered worthy of

31

attention once it was conceptualised in the field of men, markets, and production (Johnston

& Baumann 2010).

Despite this historical neglect, sociologists have increasingly come to acknowledge the

importance of food in social life, shedding light on how food plays a vital role in the

creation of meaning and the construction of bonds of solidarity and attachment (Ferguson

2004; Mennell, Murcott & van Otterloo 1992; Warde 1997; Wood 1995). The 1980s saw

the production of many of the pioneering works in the sociology of food (see Goody 1982;

Mennell 1996 [1985]; Mintz 1985; Murcott 1982), many of which were inspired by social

anthropologists Mary Douglas and Claude Lévi-Strauss, who well before sociology,

understood that food had ‘meaning’ (see Douglas 1978 [1975]; Lévi-Strauss 1970 [1964];

1966a). By the end of the 1990s the field really began to flourish because sociologists

recognised the taken-for-granted nature of everyday food practices (Murcott 2011, p.15).

Furthermore in the last decade the sociology of food has expanded to such an extent that

food sociologist Pricilla Ferguson who earlier bemoaned, ‘Why is there no sociology of

food?’, happily declared in 2005 that ‘“Food Studies” has arrived’ (Ferguson & Zukin

1995; Ferguson 2005, p.679).

When sociologists study food the focus has not been on particular culinary practices or

cooking techniques, but on investigating the social conditions of food production and

consumption methods; examining the general discourses of food symbolism and food

choices; and interpreting the cultural context of food customs and preferences (see

Beardsworth & Keil 1997; Germov & Williams 2008; Johnston & Bauman 2010; Wills

2011). It also considers the connection between food and human interaction, and

investigates how food is talked about, discussed, and understood in the public realm (see

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Albala 2002: Anderson 2005; Atkinson 1980; Blank 2007; Mäkelä 2000; Montanari 1994;

Murcott 1983). The increasing number of sociologists producing food literature has opened

up an exciting realm of scholarly discovery (Ferguson 2005). For this reason this chapter

will now explore selected works from the sociology of food.

It is evident from the above synopsis that the sociology of food is developing into an

emerging field. Although this is an advantageous development, it also makes the means of

charting the territory of food studies a rather complex task, as the food system is rich with

‘interconnected phenomena’ (Ferguson 2005, p.680). For this reason this thesis will focus

on selected debates in the field, by reviewing what Hilary Tovey (1997) refers to as the

production/consumption ‘division of labour’ within the sociology of food. On one side of

this divide, there are sociologists that would locate themselves within rural sociology, and

investigate the organisation of agriculture and food production (see Goodman 1999; Harris

1969; Tovey 1997). On the other side, there are sociologists who would align themselves

with the sociology of consumption, and study eating, diet, and culture (see Atkinson 1980;

Caplan 1997; Johnston 2008; Johnston & Baumann 2010; Johnston & Szabo 2010; Warde

1997).

This division is imbalanced because of the ‘consumption turn’ in sociology and as a result

the sociology of food has given limited attention to the social, economic, political, and

environmental features of food production (Tovey 1997, p.21). An early exception to this

is Goodman and Redclift’s Refashioning Nature (1991), which considers both food

production and food consumption as part of the modern food system. In this manner they

attempt to connect transformative shifts in food production technology to changing

consumer concerns about food. As the sociology of food has grown, more literature has

33

been produced that attempts to rise above this division. However the main motivation to

study the production of food often appears to be a way to incorporate the topic of food into

a general sociological analysis of contemporary processes of change and restructuring in

the global economy (Tovey 1997, p.22). Tovey explains that ‘the undoubted strength of the

approach derives from its treatment of food as comparable (and different in comparable

ways from) any other commodity’ (1997, p.22). A major limitation of this approach is that

food is merely viewed as another commodity, such that food as a social category, loaded

with cultural meanings, is not taken into consideration.

In recent times the growth of alternative food networks has caused sociologists to rethink

food production and consumption perspectives (see Dowler et al. 2009; Goodman 1999;

Marsden 2000; Tovey 1997).7 This chapter will now review two specific works that sought

to rethink this approach by questioning the nature/culture divide. Food sociologists have

been apprehensive about finding the most effective way to interpret alternative food

systems and their internal relationships. Two central aspects of this impasse are the rise in

sociological interest in the consumption side of food, and the need to include ‘nature’ more

successfully into conceptualisations of food (Marsden 2000).

David Goodman’s article ‘Agro-food studies in the ‘age of ecology’’ (1999) begins by

considering this impasse. He premises that the theoretical understanding and political

relevance of food and agricultural studies are limited by the nature/society dichotomy that

views nature as external to the social domain (Goodman 1999, p.17). Goodman asserts that

this dualism reinforces the objectification of nature and weakens analytical, political, and

ethical engagement. He considers actor-network theory as a way to overcome this

deficiency, because it provides theoretical tools to address the nature/culture divide.

34

Goodman argues that food as a co-production is the crucial unifying material and symbolic

connection that bridges the natural and social together (Goodman 1999, pp.33-34). The

notion that ‘food’ is simultaneously material and symbolic, and therefore can be helpful to

interrogate and potentially bridge the natural and cultural divide is a central premise of this

thesis, which will run like a Leitmotif throughout following chapters, and will be discussed

in greater detail in the concluding discussion.

Despite Goodman’s sound intent, his use of actor-network theory on further consideration

is quite limited. Terry Marsden critiques Goodman’s approach and argues that more

cautious steps are required to build a social and ecological approach to alternative food and

agricultural developments (2000, p.20). Marsden recognises that nature and ecology must

indeed be an essential part of a more social and politically materialised approach, but he

argues that there are many ways that this can progress (2000, p.21). Marsden explains that

Goodman’s use of actor-network theory is uncritical and does not provide a clear

explanation of how the nature/culture dualism could be overcome (Marsden 2000, p.21).

He indicates that actor-network theory remains methodologically firm, but needs to be

linked with more substantive theoretical questions (Marsden 2000, p.28). As a result of this

critique he argues for the continued development of a social constructionist approach that

could build upon aspects of actor-network methodology, and connect it to substantive

theoretical dimensions and empirical studies (2000, p.21).

Marsden questions whether other approaches on top of actor-network theory are worth

considering in order to achieve a greater understanding of the hybridity of social and

natural life (2000, p.21). These questions lead Marsden to a major tension in the sociology

of food literature, specifically:

35

Dealing with this dichotomy – between the natural and cultural attribution

of value of food goods…hold[s] and project[s] varying natural and social

conceptions of the same food objects. The analytical question that such a

dichotomy raises is how are these differences in the hybridity of foods, on

the one hand, and the range of associated actors on the other, brought

together? (Marsden 2000, p.26).

Research on food and agriculture often uses this as the start point of their analysis. In the

sociology of food researchers face a central issue when examining hybridity, as food

products from ‘conception to digestion’ are hybridised in various ways and by numerous

actors, as they travel through the food system (Marsden 2000, p.26). This is an exciting

process for sociologists because of the way in which the same object is constantly

acculturated (see Ferguson 2005; Marsden 2000). These dialectics have not yet been

rigorously engaged with in the current literature from the sociology of food and agriculture.

Marsden suggests that we need to ‘build upon a more asymmetrical and differentiated

understanding of food as a natural, social, and political construction’ (Marsden 2000, p.28).

Goodman and Marsden’s respective works analyse the theoretical framework of agriculture

and food studies by explicitly examining the nature/culture dualism. They explain that the

nature/culture divide must first be considered in order to ‘respond fully to new ethical and

relational issues raised by environmental groups and urban food movements’ (Goodman

1999, p.18). In this manner they identify with the growing literature from the sociology of

nature that challenges the abstraction of nature and promotes the ‘greening’ of social theory

(see Benton 1993; Irwin 2001; Macnaghten & Urry 1998). In a similar manner this thesis

seeks to interrogate the nature/culture divide with the social category of food, and argues

that our understandings and interpretations of the nature/culture divide inform our social

practices and encounters with the natural environment. Therefore like Goodman and

36

Marsden, this thesis will explicitly examine the nature/culture divide, but it does not

consider this approach as a way to interpret alternative food systems. Rather it more

broadly examines the underlying social interpretations of the nature/culture divide as a first

step towards the development of an environmental sociology of food.

The sociology of food has developed into a widespread topic that encompasses a variety of

theories, perspectives, and interpretations.8 This sheer abundance of food literature has

presented some challenges, which will now be considered. This literature review has

shown that when food is analysed sociologically, we are not just referring to what we eat,

but what we ‘think about, talk about, dream about, and philosophize about’ (Johnston &

Baumann 2010, p.43). A central tenet of the sociology of food is to investigate what food

means and what it represents (Wills 2011, p.16). Ferguson explains the complexity of food

when she describes:

The inherently unstable character of comestibles, along with the material

destruction required by their consumption, dictates the many forms that food

assumes in the world we live in. From production to consumption, from

material to symbolic, food is all about transformation – of the material

foodstuff, of the consuming individual in body and in spirit, and of the eating

order that encompasses products and people. From production and preparation

to physiological and symbolic consumption, every stage of the food cycle turns

food into something else (Ferguson 2005, p.680).

Food is never “just” food, and this topically of food has resulted in great debate (Ferguson

2005; Goodman 1999; Marsden 2000). These debates question how food should be

academically researched, and specifically ask: ‘Does food serve as the subject or object of

explanation?’, and ‘Is food considered a given or a social construct?’ (Ferguson 2005,

p.680). It is clear from this literature review that a position has been made for food in

37

sociology. All of the texts reviewed in this section share a mutual focus on food, however

it is not always clear that they are talking about the same thing in a useful way (Ferguson

2005, p.680). In light of this understanding this thesis suggests that the sociology of food is

lacking a theoretical approach to give these studies a common denominator. In response to

these debates and this critique, the present thesis argues that ‘food’ is inherently both a

natural object and a cultural subject, and it therefore provides a way to rethink the

intersections of the nature/culture divide.

The literature review has navigated through and assessed the strengths and limitations of

the relevant literature from the sociology of nature, environmental sociology, and the

sociology of food. As a result the current thesis proposes that a new social theory is

necessary to address the deficiencies of these fields. This thesis argues that our implicit

interpretations and meanings of the nature/culture divide inform our social practices and

encounters with the natural environment. Therefore a first step towards developing a new

conceptual framework is to return to the nature/culture divide, and to reproblematise it with

the social category of food as a central lens. For this reason the following chapter will

hermeneutically reconstruct Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked (1970 [1964])

and ‘The culinary triangle’ (1966a) to examine how he has conceptualised ‘food’ and the

nature/culture dualism together.

1 Kate Soper is a philosopher, however she has contributed to key debates in the sociology of nature and environmental sociology from a critical realist perspective (see Soper 2009). 2 For Durkheim, social facts are ‘the proper field of sociology’ (2002 [1895], p.12). A social fact is ‘any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual or external constraint’ (2002 [1895], p.117). Inter alia they are evident in the form of customs, beliefs, morality, and law (Hannigan 2006, p.6). 3 Critical realist and social constructionist perspectives are not the only approaches to nature and the environment in sociology, however they will be focused on for purposes of the present thesis. 4 Social constructionism will be returned to in chapter three, which will analyse Klaus Eder’s unique social constructionist approach in his work The Social Construction of Nature (1996 [1988]).

38

5 The terms ‘constructionist’ and ‘constructivist’ refer to the same notion/perspective, the present thesis uses the former term, while Macnaghten and Urry (1988) adopt the latter. 6 For other theorists from the sociology of nature that have responded or sought to overcome the nature/culture divide (see Franklin 2002; Freudenberg, Frickel & Gramling 1995; Goldman & Schurman 2000; Inglis & Bone 2006; Macnaghten & Urry 1998; Murphy & Dunlap 2011; Pickering 1996). 7 Alternative food systems are more ‘non-conventional chains’ that generally refer to those connected with organics and ‘radically different organizational structures’, such as food co-ops, farm-assured schemes, and ethical trading (Marsden 2000, p.20). 8 It is important to mention that there are numerous sociological works that study food differently to those discussed in this chapter. However these texts are beyond the scope of this thesis, and will only receive a brief acknowledgement. Some scholars have explored the connection between food and gender identities (see Bentley 2005; Inness 2001; Nath 2011); others have investigated the links between food, race, and ethnicity (see Ray 2004; Williams-Forson 2006); the impact of globalization on the modern food system (see Barndt 2002; Friedman 1993; Mintz 2002, 2008; Ritzer 2004; Scholosser 2002; Wilk 2002, 2006); the role of food in the media and popular culture (see Ferry 2003; Parasecoli 2008); the historical development of the modern food system (see Albala 2002; Boisard 2003; Ferrières 2003; Goody 1982; Mennell 1996 [1985]; Serventi & Sabban 2002; Toussaint-Samat 1992; Wheaton 1983); and there has also been a burgeoning study into ethical food consumption and alternative food choices (see Blank 2007; DuPuis & Goodman 2005; Guthman 2003; Johnston 2008; Johnston & Szabo 2010; Moore 2006; Smith 2006; Warde 1997).

39

CHAPTER 2: The Structuralist Language of Food:

Claude Lévi-Strauss

This chapter will consider Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked (1970 [1964])

together with its succeeding article ‘The culinary triangle’ (1966a) (Hereafter referred to as

RC and CT respectively) in order to examine how they contribute to reproblematising the

nature/culture divide in modern society.1 Lévi-Strauss’s work has been selected for

analysis because, although he is an anthropologist, RC is one of the few texts that explicitly

considers the nature/culture divide and recognises ‘food’ as a central category in its

analysis. Stephen Mennell notes that RC and CT have ‘transfixed almost everyone working

on the subject [of food]’ (1996 [1985], p.6), to such an extent that it has expanded beyond

anthropology and has became a foundational text for the emerging field of the sociology of

food (see Beardsworth & Keil 1997; Ferguson & Zukin 1995; Mennell 1996 [1985]).2 In

Lévi-Strauss’s CT he presents a structuralist study of culinary practices to show that ‘the

cooking of a society is a language [that] unconsciously translates its structure’ (1966a,

p.595).3 As a result food sociologists generally acknowledge that Lévi-Strauss introduced

them to ‘how good food is to think with’ (Ferguson 2005, p.681).4 This chapter focuses on

Lévi-Strauss’s RC and CT because he has made a seminal contribution to the central

question animating this thesis (i.e. ‘How can the social category of ‘food’ help to

problematise the meanings of the nature/culture divide in modern society?’). For this

reason the present thesis will analyse his connection between the techniques of cooking and

his distinction between nature and culture. In the concluding chapter this analysis will be

revisited to reconstruct how Lévi-Strauss’s work, together with Eder’s, contributes to a

rethinking of the culture/nature divide with the social category of food. It will be a first

40

step towards developing a theoretical framework that can underpin an environmental

sociology of food.

This chapter will conduct a hermeneutical reconstruction of Lévi-Strauss’s texts. It will

consider RC and how this investigation of myths led Lévi-Strauss to note the significance

of cooking practices in understanding society. The discussion of RC will set the foundation

for an analysis of CT, because in this essay he focuses on food and the notion of the ‘raw’

and the ‘cooked’ in detail. Prior to this analysis the present chapter will provide an

overview of Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual biography, and it will justify the selection of this

classical anthropologist with reference to the French social theory tradition. The present

chapter will consider Ferdinand de Saussure (1974 [1916]), and Roman Jakobson’s (1956)

linguistics, which were essential intellectual sources for structuralism in general, and

particularly in the development of RC and CT. It will then consider Lévi-Strauss’s

interpretation and use of structuralism in RC, and from this understanding CT will be

critically analysed. Lastly the limitations of Lévi-Strauss’s distinction between nature and

culture will be assessed, which will facilitate the transition into Klaus Eder’s cultural and

symbolic approach in chapter three.

Intellectual Biography

In preparation for the critical analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s works, this chapter must first

consider his intellectual biography to assist in contextualising RC and CT. Claude Lévi-

Strauss was a French social anthropologist (1908-2009) and has been regarded as one of the

founding ‘fathers of modern anthropology’ (Leach 1996 [1970]; Wiseman, Groves &

Appignanesi 1997). He lived in Paris and studied law and philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne

University. After he aggregated from philosophy he became a secondary school teacher

41

and taught in Paris until he was offered a role as a visiting professor of sociology at the

University of San Paulo (Leach 1996 [1970], p.18). During this time Lévi-Strauss

conducted several research projects into the Mato Grosso and the Amazon Rainforest,

which he drew upon in later studies.

Lévi-Strauss’s first major text The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969 [1949]) was a

play on the title of Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995

[1912]). Lévi-Strauss drew on Durkheim’s idea of the ‘social fact’, which occurs over

and above the subject, and nearly has a life of its own, but Lévi-Strauss aimed to ‘purify it

of the presence of and necessity of subjects at all’ (Ortner 2006, p.108). In The Elementary

Structures of Kinship (1969 [1949]) Lévi-Strauss sought to investigate how families were

organised by examining the logical structures that lie beneath relationships rather than their

contents (1969 [1949]). This text was well received and swiftly came to be considered as

one of the most significant anthropological works on kinship (Leach 1996 [1970]). From

this initial project, Lévi-Strauss elaborated his structuralist perspective in several of his

subsequent works (see Lévi-Strauss 1966b; 1969 [1962]; 1973 [1955]). His main theories

are set forth in Structural Anthropology (1963 [1958]), in which he considers culture to be

a system of symbolic communication. As a result of these works he became widely

recognised as one of the leading theorists in the structuralist school of thought (Leach 1996

[1970], p.30).

The term ‘structuralism’ first came into use in the late 1920s in the work of the Russian

linguist Roman Jakobson (1956).5 It was not until the mid-1950s that it became popular in

France through Lévi-Strauss’s work (1969 [1949]), but by the end of the 1960s

structuralism became widely recognised in countries outside of France (Hénaff 1998).

42

Structuralism generally denotes a method of interpretation and suggests that the structure of

human thought processes are the same in all cultures, and that these processes occur in the

form of binary oppositions (McGee & Warms 2012; Runciman 1969). Lévi-Strauss sought

to uncover these underlying thought processes by studying kinship, myths, and, of

particular interest to the present thesis, food. Furthermore his structuralist approach

emphasised that features of culture need to be understood in terms of their relationship to

the entire system (McGee & Warms 2012; Sturrock 1993). This structuralist method was

fundamental in his master project, Mythologiques, a four-volume study of ‘the logic of

myth’. The first volume in this series is RC followed by From Honey to Ashes (1973

[1966]), The Origin of Table Manners (1978 [1968]), and The Naked Man (1990 [1971]).

In these works Lévi-Strauss followed the cultural evolution of a single myth from the

Bororo tribe in South America through to North America, and then to the Arctic Circle

(pp.1-2). He embarked on this far-reaching project in his customary structuralist method,

as he examined the underlying structure of relations among the features of the myth, rather

than concentrating on the myth itself (p.164). Lévi-Strauss’s structural study of myths and

cooking in RC and CT will be analysed in greater detail shortly.

Lévi-Strauss’s work has been very influential for the social and human sciences, including

anthropology, philosophy, and sociology (see Barthes 1972, 1997 [1961]; Bourdieu 1990;

Derrida 1978; Foucault 1994). Nevertheless as Lévi-Strauss is from the field of

anthropology it is necessary to justify the selection of his work in this sociological thesis.

In the discussion of Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual history thus far, the present chapter noted

that Lévi-Strauss was engaged in philosophy and sociology before he become professor of

social anthropology at the Collège de France. Lévi-Strauss’s disciplinary shifts are

significant, not because they were major changes in his academic trajectory, but because

43

they reveal how the French tradition of social theory is quite distinct to the German or

English tradition. French social theory incorporates the sociological perspective together

with philosophical, political, and anthropological viewpoints. The French tradition’s

interdisciplinary connections are particularly evident in the case of Durkheim, which will

now be considered.

Durkheim is celebrated as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology from his earlier works

(see Durkheim 1984 [1893], 2002 [1895]), however in his later writing he became

interested in the anthropological view (and the human condition) of society. This shift is

clear in the collaboration with his nephew Marcel Mauss in Primitive Classifications (1963

[1903]), which was the precursor to his ‘anthropological turn’ in The Elementary Forms of

Religious Life (1995 [1912]).6 Durkheim argued that human kind is a symbolising animal,

and through this symbolisation a civilising process occurs that connects each individual in

society (Rundell & Mennell 1998). In order to assert this Durkheim considered the

boundary between sociology and anthropology to be fluid (Rundell & Mennell 1998, p.21).

Durkheim’s thought was influential to Mauss’s theories (see Mauss 1970 [1969]), which in

turn was very distinct, but nevertheless important in the formation of Lévi-Strauss’s work

(see Lévi-Strauss 1987). This connection is clear in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s essay ‘From

Mauss to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ (1960). As Merleau-Ponty explains:

Following the movement of Mauss’s thought beyond what he said and wrote

we are looking at him retrospectively in the perspective of social anthropology.

We have already crossed the line which separates his thought from a different

conception of and approach to the social conception which is brilliantly

represented by Claude Lévi-Strauss… in which social facts are neither things

nor ideas; they are structures (Merleau-Ponty 1960, p.116-117).

44

Lévi-Strauss’s reinterpretation of Mauss’s work played a central role in defining his early

intellectual course (Lechte 2008, p.111), which was facilitated by the interdisciplinary

constellation of French social theory. This tradition embraced interdisciplinary interaction

in such a way that the field of sociology and anthropology have intermingled and shaped

each other. In addition concepts from the field of linguistics were also important to the

formation of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist approach in RC and CT. However the concept of

structuralism requires further elaboration, and so this chapter will now consider the initial

development of Lévi-Strauss’s approach in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969

[1949]), followed by a discussion of Saussure and Jakobson’s linguistics.

In The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969 [1949]) Lévi-Strauss studies the link

between kinship and exchange. He examined a ceremonial custom of a meal from small

restaurants in the south region of France, in which a small bottle of wine is given to each

diner with their meal (1969 [1949], p.58). The wine each patron receives is similar to their

neighbours (i.e. they both receive the same amount of the lowest quality wine), however

Lévi-Strauss observed that ‘the contents of the wine will be poured out, not into the

owner’s glass, but into [their] neighbours. And this neighbour will immediately make the

corresponding gesture of reciprocity’ (1969 [1949], p.58). Lévi-Strauss viewed this

exchange and noted that the amount of wine, and the portion of food remains the same, but

‘the difference in attitude towards the wine and food is immediately manifested’ (1969

[1949], p.58). Lévi-Strauss explains that the bottles are identical in volume, the content is

similar, and each customer consumed no more wine than the amount they started with, and

so he indicates from an economic perspective no one has gained or lost (1969 [1949], p.59).

However he discerns ‘there is more to the exchange itself than the things exchanged’ (1969

[1949], p.59). In this way ‘the link between exchange and the ‘total social fact’ is revealed,

45

since it is not what is exchanged that is important, but the fact of exchange itself, a fact

inseparable from the very constitution of social life’ (Lechte 2008, p.112). From this study

Lechte considers some significant ideas of Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology:

The first is the principle that social and cultural life cannot be uniquely

explained by a version of functionalism: cultural life is not explicit in

terms of the intrinsic nature of the phenomenon in question. Nor can it

be explained empirically by facts deemed to speak for themselves…

[rather] structuralist anthropology…focuses on the way elements of a

system combine together, rather than on their intrinsic value (Lechte

2008, p.112).

In this manner Lévi-Strauss argues that symbolic structures of kinship, the exchange of

goods, and language are essential to understand social life. In order to gain a greater

understanding of these ideas, the present chapter will now consider the work of Saussure.

Saussure was interested in the deep structures of language rather than its content, and his

theory of langue and parole was especially significant to the formation of Lévi-Strauss’s

structuralist anthropology.7 Saussure used this theoretical pair to present the differences

between language as a ‘coherent structure of differences’ and language as it is ‘practiced by

the community of speakers’ (Lechte 2008, p.180). He argued that language could not be

understood by its content, rather it needed to be viewed at the level of structure (Leach

1996 [1970]). Saussure’s central notion is that language is first and foremost a social

institution, and so he deemed the individual linguistic approach to be deficient. Saussure

observed the way language changes constantly, and as a result he argued that people indeed

form language, but they are equally formed by language (Lechte 2008, p.181).

46

In his Course in General Linguistics (1974 [1916]) Saussure endeavoured to produce a

‘universal science of language’ in which all communication corresponds to ‘unmoving

rules’ (Ashley et al. 2004, p.3). Merleau-Ponty explains that in Saussure’s linguistics:

Structure is a concrete, incarnate system. When Saussure used to say that

signs are diacritical – that they function only through their differences,

through a certain spread between themselves and others, and not, to begin

with, by evoking a positive signification – he was making us see the unity

which lies beneath a language’s explicit signification, a systemization which

achieved in a language before its conceptual principle is known (Merleau-Ponty

1960, p.117).

Saussure began his structuralist analysis of language by dividing it into smaller phonemic

units. He examined the units or signs that build any system of communication, to show that

these ‘signs’ can be divided into two elements, the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’ (Saussure

1974 [1916], p.157). These two parts are symmetrical to each other and, in Saussure’s

system, a signifier is typically a word, either spoken or written, but it may also refer to an

image, sound, smell, or taste, while the signified is the mental concept or meaning.

Saussure argues that ‘the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary’,

because there is ‘no essential bond in language between word and thing’ (Lechte 2008,

p.180). David Morley clarifies that, for Saussure, meaning is solely a ‘function of

difference within a system’ as the signs that we seek to understand are ‘purely differential

and defined not by their positive content but negatively, by their relations with the other

terms of the system’ (1992, p.67). Hence the sign’s essential feature is in being what the

others are not, and from this notion Saussure postulates an unlimited series of differences. 8

Saussure’s concepts laid the foundations for the application of this system in the social and

human sciences, by allowing the focus of study to shift from detailing facts of human

47

behaviour and historical events to researching ‘human action as a system of meaning’

(Lechte 2008, p.181). As Lechte explains, this:

Was the result of emphasising, at the broader societal level, the arbitrary nature

of the sign and the corresponding idea of language as a system of conventions.

Whereas a search for intrinsic facts and their effects had hitherto been made (as

exemplified when the historian supposed that human beings need food to

survive, just as they need language to communicate with each other – therefore

events turned out this way), now the socio-cultural system at a given moment in

history, becomes the object of study…an approach that would generally attempt

to take seriously the primacy of the socio-cultural domain for human beings

(Lechte 2008, p.181).

For Lévi-Strauss the application of this concept involves methodological classification of

difference and ‘separation of the self and other’ (Ashley et al. 2004, p.3). It requires a

strong distinction, in which the characteristics of one object, individual, or group are

viewed in sharp polarity to another, for example man/woman, black/white, or in the case of

RC and CT, the distinction between nature and culture.

Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropology draws on this linguistic approach, as he considers:

In all languages of the world, complex systems of oppositions among phonemes

do nothing but elaborate in multiple directions a simpler system common to

them all; the contrast between consonant and vowel, by the workings of a double

opposition between compact and diffuse, acute and grave, produces… what have

been called the “vowel triangle” and the “consonant triangle”:

(Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.597).

a u i

k p t

48

This concept requires an understanding of Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle’s (1956)

linguistic approach. Jakobson and Halle claimed that young children gain control of the

basic vowels and consonants in order to ‘generate meaningful noise patterns’ in a

standardised sequence (1956, p.38). They examined that a child first develops the

fundamental vowel/consonant opposition by recognising a contrast in ‘loudness’. A child

identifies that a vowel is a ‘high-energy noise and loud-compact’, whereas a consonant is a

‘low energy noise and soft-diffuse’ (Jakobson & Halle 1956, p.38). Lévi-Strauss made

strong claims for structural linguistics, because he perceived that other forms of cultural

expression, such as kinship systems, were categorised in a similar manner to the human

language (Runciman 1969, p.255). He argued that this methodological principle could be

transposed to other domains, and particularly to ‘that of cooking’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966a,

p.587). These linguistic concepts are patent in RC and CT, and will be returned to in the

ensuing analysis. However at this point a brief comparison of Bronislaw Malinowski’s

(1935) functionalist perspective of food to Lévi-Strauss’s might be useful.

Malinowski’s study of the Trobriand Islanders investigated the meaning of food in their

society (1935). Malinowski studied the Trobriand society from a functionalist perspective,

as he identified that ‘gifts of food’ were vital to ‘maintain kinship bonds’ and ‘relations of

power’ among the Trobrianders (1935, p.101). From this observation he determined that

food production was central to understand how this society lived and functioned. However

when the functionalist approach was succeeded by structuralism, the study of food changed

significantly and the ‘meaning’ of food become central. Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil

examined this change, and explain that:

The questions posed about food and eating from a structuralist perspective have

a different emphasis as compared to those posed from a functionalist viewpoint.

49

Rather than focusing upon practicalities and the social processes involved in

producing, allocating and consuming food, the structuralist gaze is directed towards

the rules and conventions that govern the ways in which food items are classified,

prepared and combined with each other (Beardsworth and Keil 1997, p.61).

Lévi-Strauss, as one of the founders of structuralist anthropology, was central to this

theoretical shift as he argued that the universal aspects of human culture do not exist in

manifest and comparable facts or customs, rather they exist only at the level of structure.

Hence Lévi-Strauss argued that we cannot discover anything from the comparison of

isolated cultural items. Rather it is the contrast between the items that provides the

information, because each item has significance only in relation to the others. From this

understanding he sought to contrast the patterns of these relations in order to observe the

links between sets of human behaviours (p.333). This is the structuralist method he utilised

in RC and CT, and so this chapter will now analyse these texts accordingly.

The Raw and the Cooked

RC is one of the seminal texts of structuralist anthropology. In his ‘overture’ Lévi-Strauss

explains that RC only describes ‘the initial stages of a long journey through…native

mythologies’ (p.1). He began by establishing a ‘key myth’ from the Bororo tribe in South

America, which he compared to other myths of the same community, and then examined

them in contrast to the myths of the neighbouring villages. Eventually he explored some

eight hundred myths from the many indigenous populations of South America (p.1). From

opossums to parrots, cooking to Charivari, Rousseau to rainbows, Wagner to vultures, and

Jupiter to jaguars, Lévi-Strauss managed to weave all these together ‘in a seamless web’,

such that John Morton remarks that his reading of RC was like stepping into a strange

dream (1988, p.100). Yet amongst all the fantasy Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist analytical

objective is clear. His central idea is that myths cannot be understood in isolation, they

50

must be interpreted as part of a complete system of myths. A structuralist analysis of myth

systems requires an examination of all the common features of various myths and the

differences that connect them. Lévi-Strauss argues that it is not the individual myth that is

important, rather he believes that we must view the relationship and variations between the

myths (p.4). He explains that:

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths

operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact…it would

perhaps be better to go still further and, disregarding the thinking subject

completely, proceed as if the thinking process were taking place in the

myths, in their reflection upon themselves and their interrelation (p.12).

In this way he posits that there is ‘one myth only’ because underneath the mélange of

mythical stories he identifies a binary universal structure, particularly that of nature and

culture (pp.4, 64-65, 164).

Cooking runs like a Leitmotif throughout RC as Lévi-Strauss proposes that the key myth

from the Bororo tribe ‘belongs to a set of myths that explain the origin of cooking’, while

in others, cooking practices operate as symbolic markers that mediate between a series of

binary oppositions: heaven/earth, life/death, nature/society (pp.64-65). Lévi-Strauss

explains that the purpose of RC is to show how empirical categories, ‘such as categories of

the raw and the cooked, the fresh and the decayed, the moistened and the burned…[can] be

used as conceptual tools with which to elaborate abstract ideas and combine them in the

form of propositions’ (p.1). He determined through a systematic analysis of each myth

together, that several of the myths were on the same theme and function in terms of a

double contrast between what is raw and what is cooked, and between the fresh and the

decayed (p.142). A passage from RC in which Lévi-Strauss contrasts the myths of two

tribes, specifically the Ge and the Tupi-Guarani, might be useful to clarify this concept:

51

The raw/cooked axis is characteristic of culture; the fresh/decayed one of

nature, since cooking brings about the cultural transformation of the raw, just

as putrefaction is its natural transformation. In the total system thus restored,

the Tupi-Guarani myths illustrate a more radical procedure than the Ge myths:

according to the Tupi-Guarani way of thinking, the significant contrast is

between cooking…and putrefaction…whereas in the Ge myths the significant

contrast is between the cooking of foodstuffs and eating them raw…[The]

dividing line between nature and culture is different, according to whether we

are considering the Ge or Tupi myths: in the former it separates the cooked from

the raw; in the latter it separates the raw from the rotten. For the Ge, then, the

raw + rotten relationship is a natural category, whereas for the Tupi the raw +

cooked relation is a cultural category (pp.142-143).

From this analysis Lévi-Strauss determines that eating practices and ‘the gustatory code’

occupy a privileged position, because the myths depict ‘the origin of fire, and thus the

origin of cooking’, and so Lévi-Strauss explains ‘we gain access to myths about man’s loss

of immortality’ (p.164). Lévi-Strauss considers that negatively or positively all of the

myths are about the origin of cooking food. This reveals ‘the truly essential place occupied

by cooking in the native thought’, as cooking marks ‘the transition from nature to culture’

(p.164). From this point in RC the myths widen to consider the ‘causes of man’s mortality’

(p.170). A comprehension of human mortality reaches far beyond the scope of this thesis.

For this reason this chapter will now view the conclusion Lévi-Strauss draws in RC, and it

will then analyse CT, an independent essay that emerged from this investigation.

In RC, Lévi-Strauss concludes that although myths may seem unique, they are simply one

particular instance of a universal law in human thought. Lévi-Strauss proposes that myths

signify the mind that creates them, because they make use of the world, of which it is itself

52

a part (p.341). He explains that ‘there is a simultaneous production of myths themselves,

by the mind that generates them, and, by the myths, of an image of the world which is

already inherent in the structure of the mind’ (p.341). It is evident that Lévi-Strauss

recognises the honoured place that food held in the myths he analysed. He concluded that

cooking is a medium that reveals the unconscious binary opposition of nature and culture in

human thought. Lévi-Strauss determined that through the act of cooking, people

communicate that they are cultured and human rather than ‘savage’ or animal, or to put it in

Lévi-Straussian terms that they were themselves ‘cooked’ instead of ‘raw’ (p.164).

In RC’s final chapter ‘The Wedding’ (p.319-342) Lévi-Strauss’s premise that the binary

opposition of nature and culture is universal in human thought becomes much clearer. He

draws a comparison of primitive and traditional customs that contain notions of the raw and

the cooked, and notes that in several regions of France ‘there is evidence of identical

customs intended to hasten the marriages of young men and women that have remained

celibate too long’ (p.334). Lévi-Strauss examines these various customs, and discovers that

in the St Omer district, if a younger daughter is married first, her poor elder sister at some

point during the celebration would be ‘seized and placed on top of the oven so that she

might be warmed up, as the saying was, since her situation seemed to indicate that she had

remained insensitive to love’ (p.334). He recognised that similar customs throughout

France existed, but in several areas of England the sanction was different, as the unmarried

sister was ordered to dance barefoot (p.334). In contrast again was the custom in the Upper

Forez, Isère, Ardèche, and Gard areas of France, in which the unmarried elder brother or

sister were made to eat a salad of clovers and oats, or nettles and roots, which was termed

‘making them eat salad’ or ‘making them eat turnip’ (p.335).

53

In Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist fashion he explained that rather than interpreting these

various customs individually, they must be compared and contrasted in order to ‘isolate the

common features and hope to understand them’ (p.335). In this manner Lévi-Strauss

interprets the customs and argues that:

They all seem to depend, more or less on the contrast between the cooked

(oven) and the raw (salad), or between nature and culture, the two contrasts

being readily confused in linguistic usage. In eighteenth-century French “to

dance barefoot” might have been expressed by the phrase danser à cru (“to

dance raw”); compare chausser des bottes à cru “to wear boots without

stockings”…In English, “to sleep naked” can still be expressed colloquially

as “to sleep in the raw” (p.335).

However Lévi-Strauss realises these connections do not account for the first custom ‘the

symbolic “roasting” of the elder unmarried sister’, and so he endeavours to link this

tradition with other long-established ‘roasting’ customs and beliefs in remote societies. He

noticed that similar ‘roasting’ traditions existed in Cambodia, Malaysia, Siam, and various

regions of Indonesia, for women who had just given birth or reached puberty (p.335-336).

From this consideration Lévi-Strauss indicates:

This rapid summary of customs, which ought to be systematically noted

down and classified, does at least allow us to suggest a tentative definition:

the individuals who are “cooked” are those more involved in physiological

process: the newborn child, the woman who has just given birth or the

pubescent girl. The conjunction of a member of the social group with

nature must be mediatized through the intervention of cooking fire, whose

normal function is to mediatize the conjunction of the raw product and the

human consumer, and whose operation thus has the effect of making sure

that a natural creature is at one and the same time cooked and socialized

(p.336).

54

Lévi-Strauss objected to the dominant idea that ‘traditional customs are less logical than

primitive customs’ (p.337). He suggested that primitive customs continually function along

the same lines, that ‘the “cooking” of women and adolescent girls corresponds to the need

for their relations with themselves and the world to be mediatized by the use of

“hypercultural” utensils’ (p.337). In contrast, European societies forced the unmarried

elder sister onto the stove, removed her shoes, and were feed with raw foods, should,

according to Lévi-Strauss, be given opposite meanings.

From this comparison between traditional and primitive customs, Lévi-Strauss surmises

‘that these interpretations, which have been so laboriously deduced from remote and

initially incomprehensible myths, link up with universal analogies which are immediately

perceptible in our use of words, whatever our native language happens to be’ (p.340).

Lévi-Strauss argues that the distinctive character of myths results from the ‘multiplication

of one level by another or several others, and which, as in language, serves to indicate areas

of meaning’ (p.340). In RC, Lévi-Strauss emphasises that the relationship between cooking

practices and the nature/culture divide is manifest in both primitive and traditional

cultures.9 As a result he argued that ‘the cooking of a society is a language [that]

unconsciously translates its structure’ (1966a, p.595), which led Lévi-Strauss to explore

this connection in greater detail in his essay CT.

The Culinary Triangle

From the analysis of RC it is clear that the theoretical connection between cooking

practices and the nature/culture divide was a recurrent theme. The present chapter will now

analyse CT in which the above becomes a central focus. This essay is significant because it

demonstrates how cooking can be used to conceptualise the distinction between nature and

55

culture. It also argues that specific culinary activities can reveal ‘sociological and

cosmological differences’ (Hage 1979, p.81). Furthermore, his concept of the culinary

triangle is important to this thesis because it has received broad recognition in the sociology

of food for its abstract element in the structure of food and food systems (Ferguson 2005,

p.686).

In CT Lévi-Strauss observes that just as there is no human society without a spoken

language, so too is there no human society which does not, in some shape or form, process

its food by cooking (1966a, p.587). Although Lévi-Strauss realised that each culture’s food

products are highly diverse, he recognises that people organise and cook their food in a

similar manner. His culinary triangle is an abstract model that is independent of any

culture and intended to be universally applicable. Lévi-Strauss’s overarching aim in CT is

consistent with that previously concluded in RC, that ‘the cooking of a society is a language

[that] unconsciously translates its structure’ (1966a, p.595). In CT he provides a detailed

structuralist analysis of cooking practices, and as a result he determines that the

differentiation between the raw and the cooked is a reflection of the universal binary

opposition of nature and culture in human thought.

Lévi-Strauss begins his essay by providing an account of how he derives his cultural

generalisations from a linguistic foundation. He explains that ‘like language, it seems to

me, that the cuisine of society may be analyzed into constituent elements, which in this case

we might call ‘gustemes’ and which may be organized according to certain structures of

opposition and correlation’ (Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958], p.86). ‘Gusteme’ was a term Lévi-

Strauss coined from the linguistic term ‘phoneme’, which to recall from the earlier

discussion, was examined in the work of Saussure (1974 [1916]) and also in Jakobson and

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Halle’s linguistics (1956). Lévi-Strauss was interested in the idea that phonemes, which are

developed by binary oppositions of distinct phonetic sounds, establish meaning in everyday

language, and so he sought to apply this concept to the ‘language’ of cooking (1966a).

Recalling Jakobson and Halle’s vowel and consonant triangles (1956), Lévi-Strauss

develops a triangle of culinary practices with each apex corresponding to the categories of

the raw, cooked, and the rotten:

He suggests that the cooked is a cultural transformation (élaboré) of the raw, whereas the

rotten is a natural transformation (non-élaboré). He perceives that underlying the triangle

there is a double opposition between elaborate/unelaborate and nature/culture (Lévi-Strauss

1966a, p.587).

However Lévi-Strauss considers this initial triangle to be a structure of empty forms,

because it does not reveal anything about the cooking of any specific society. He

determines that it is only through observation that one can discover what the ‘raw’,

‘cooked’, and ‘rotten’ mean. Through a multitude of examples from diverse cultures, Lévi-

Strauss identifies that these meanings will not be the same everywhere (Lévi-Strauss 1966a,

p.587). Drawing on his knowledge of phonemes and linguistic triangles, Lévi-Strauss

recognised that a ‘concrete triangle [must be] inscribed within the abstract triangle’ (1966a

Figure 1 The Culinary Triangle (Primary Form) (Leach 1996 [1970], p.40)

57

p.587). He notes that in all cuisines food is not simply cooked, rather each foodstuff must

be cooked in one way or another. In the same way he observes that there is not one true

state of rawness. Only select foods can be consumed raw and usually raw food can still

only be eaten once selected, washed, chopped, or seasoned. In addition, rotting can only

occur through particular methods, whether spontaneous or controlled (for example blue

cheese) (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.587).

From this knowledge Lévi-Strauss searches for three cooking methods to situate within the

raw, cooked, and rotten triangle. He returns to his study of myth and identifies that there

are two primary methods of cooking, the roasted and the boiled. Lévi-Strauss then

questions:

In what does their difference consist? Roasted food is directly exposed to

the fire; with the fire it realizes an unmediated conjunction, whereas boiled

food is doubly mediated, by the water in which it is immersed, and by the

receptacle that holds both water and food. On two grounds, then, one

can say that the roasted is on the side of culture: literally, because boiling

requires the use of a receptacle, a cultural object; symbolically, in as much

as culture is a mediation of the relations between man and the world, and

boiling demands a mediation (by water) of the relation between food and

fire which is absent in roasting (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.588).

Lévi-Strauss determines that behind the opposition of roasted and boiled is the underlying

binary opposition of nature and culture. However he identifies that a third term is required

to complete the culinary triangle, to which he believes the cooking technique of smoking is

the most appropriate. Smoking, like roasting, involves an unmediated process, but it also

differs from roasting, because, like boiling it is a slow method of cooking (Lévi-Strauss

1966a, p.591). He observes that smoking is closest to the abstract category of the cooked,

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and that it represents the most cultural method of cooking (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.593).

With smoking decided as the third culinary practice, Lévi-Strauss establishes his developed

culinary triangle by situating these three cooking processes (roasting, boiling, and smoking)

onto the original triangle:

Lévi-Strauss explains that within the primary model he traced another triangle that

represents the most elementary cooking recipes:

Roasting, boiling and smoking. The smoked and the boiled are opposed as to

the nature of the intermediate element between fire and food, which is either

air or water. The smoked and the roasted are opposed by the smaller or larger

place given to the element air; and the roasted and the boiled by the presence

or absence of water. The boundary between nature and culture, which one can

imagine as parallel to either the axis of air or the axis of water, puts the roasted

and the smoked on the side of nature, the boiled on the side of culture as to

means; or, as to results, the smoked on the side of culture, the roasted and the

boiled on the side of nature (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.594).

Lévi-Strauss considers that his two-dimensional culinary triangle shape might need to be

replaced by a complex three-dimensional tetrahedral form in order to account for all the

various cooking practices, such as grilling, frying, braising, and steaming. In addition this

structure could be enlarged to encompass the opposition of ‘animal and vegetable

Figure 2 The Culinary Triangle (Developed Form) (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.594)

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foodstuffs (if they entail differentiating methods of cooking)’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.595).

The ‘distinction of vegetables into cereals and legumes’ could also be added to the structure

(Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.595). Moreover he suggests that seasonings too, should be

positioned in regard to the inclusion or exclusion of salt and pepper on a given food product

(Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.595).

After considering these various cooking practices, which could continue to expand

infinitely, Lévi-Strauss concludes that the most efficient way to utilise the culinary triangle

is to position it as a grille.10 In this way the culinary triangle may be superimposed on

numerous sociological, economic, or religious contrasts including: family and society, men

and women, village and bush, and sacred and profane (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.595). It is

clear that in RC and CT, Lévi-Strauss provides an important argument for the underlying

meanings of food and the cultural significance of eating (Murcott 1982, p.209).

Nevertheless sociologists and anthropologists alike have frequently raised concerns about

Lévi-Strauss’s methodology and theoretical assumptions, which will now be considered as

a basis for a more detailed critique of Lévi-Strauss’s distinction between nature and culture

in the concluding discussion.

When RC was first published Morton recalls that it was met with both intrigue and

scepticism (1988, p.100). In the ‘Overture’ of RC, Lévi-Strauss rebuts censures of

formalism and idealism that were directed against the structuralist approach he developed

in Structural Anthropology (1963 [1958]). He justified his work by explaining that:

For this book to be worthwhile, it is not necessary that it should be assumed

to embody the truth for years to come…I shall be satisfied if it is credited

with the modest achievement of having left a difficult problem in a rather

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less than satisfactory manner than it was before. Nor must we forget that

in science there are no final truths. The scientific mind does not so much

provide the right answers as ask the right questions (p.7).

However Morton asked ‘can a project of the scope of Mythologiques escape the charge of

seeking ‘a total mythological pattern?’’ (1988, p.101). Morton’s question is answered in

the final pages of RC as Lévi-Strauss does indeed draw a conclusion beyond establishing a

fruitful viewpoint for the analysis of myths. He reveals his intention in RC when he states:

If now asked to what final meaning these mutually significative meanings

are referring - since that in the last resort and in their totality they must refer

to something - the only reply…is that myths signify the mind that evolves

them by making use of the world of which it is itself a part (p.341).

Many believed that Lévi-Strauss’s approach would lead to an important discovery, however

most were unwilling to accept his conclusion that myths were generated by ‘an image of

the world which is already inherent in the structure of the mind’ (p.341). For this reason

this chapter will now view two major critiques of Lévi-Strauss’s concepts. The first on the

limitations of his transcultural approach, and the second will consider the deficiency of his

structuralist methodology based on linguistics.

The first limitation of Lévi-Strauss’s work is his transcultural approach. As previously

considered, the intention of Lévi-Strauss’s analysis is to show that beneath the diversities of

culinary culture there is an implicit common structure (1966a, p.595). Mary Douglas (1978

[1975]) questions Lévi-Strauss’s belief that it is more useful to examine the widespread

similarity between cultures, rather than observing the differences between them. She

indicates that Lévi-Strauss ‘takes leave of the small-scale social relations which generate

the codification and are sustained by it’ (Douglas 1978 [1975], p.250). In response Lévi-

Strauss explains that his project is significant because he has found a way to identify

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universal forms of human thought (p.341). However sociology is often wary and critical of

universal and grand theories of society as they do not address dynamic aspects of culture,

nor do they account for human individuality.

The second limitation is the methodological weakness of Lévi-Strauss’s culinary triangle

because his universal statements about cooking practices are only partially supported by

experiments that have tested his structuralist anthropology. Bob Ashley (et al.) critique

Lévi-Strauss’s concepts as they suggest that at times ‘there seems to be a sleight of hand

operating with Lévi-Strauss’s explication’ (2004, p.33). Adrienne Lehrer endeavoured to

trial the methods that Lévi-Strauss used to construct his culinary triangle (1972). She

examined his establishment of the raw, the cooked, and the rotten, together with the

cooking techniques of roasted, boiled, and smoked. In this project she determined that

while her data confirms some of Lévi-Strauss’s conjectures, she found many others to be

amiss (Lehrer 1972, p.155). Lehrer scrutinises Lévi-Strauss’s opposition of nature and

culture, and the way he postulates boiling with culture and roasting with nature. She

considers Lévi-Strauss’s data as ambiguous, especially his metaphorical connection

between ‘boiled’ and ‘spoiled’ simply because it ‘resembles it’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966a,

p.594). She explains that this relationship cannot be confirmed in any way. Lévi-Strauss’s

culinary triangle is not a precise model of the way cultures generally categorise their own

cooking techniques, and so Lehrer determines ‘there are dangers in generalising from

linguistic analysis’ (1972, p.169).

However Lévi-Strauss is not arguing that these meanings are the same across all cultures.

He recognises that there are vast differences between diverse cultures, and as Stephen

Horrigan notes ‘empirical criticisms miss the point’ of Lévi-Strauss’s work’ (Horrigan

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1988, p.41). Lévi-Strauss in fact argues that the nature/culture opposition can be

configured in various ways depending on the context of the food practices of diverse

cultures (Ashley et al. 2004, p.34). The strength of Lévi-Strauss’s argument proceeds from

his simple model, but as Ashley (et al.) recognise, ‘if this apparent simplicity is actually

generated by some rather crude conjectures along the way, then the legitimacy of the

culinary triangle itself begins to look rather precarious’ (2004, p.34). Furthermore there

has been doubt towards the foundation of Lévi-Strauss’s theory, specifically in his

application of Jakobson and Halle’s linguistic theory (Clarke 1981; Mounin 1974). Hence

it is clear that Lévi-Strauss’s generalisations from RC and CT are not the best approach to

interpret food cultures (Atkins & Bowler 2001, p.6).

This chapter has provided a detailed analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist study of food

practices in both RC and CT. Although several limitations in Lévi-Strauss’s methodology

and theoretical deductions have been identified, this thesis still considers Lévi-Strauss’s

distinction between techniques of cooking, and between nature and culture, as valuable to

the study of food. However this thesis concurs with the critique from Ashley (et al.), as the

nature/culture divide at the core of Lévi-Strauss’s work could be utilised in a more

adequate theory (2004, p.40). Cooking is indeed a method in which the raw materials

produced by nature are transformed into culture. Nevertheless this thesis finds a point of

contention in Lévi-Strauss’s trans-historical proposition: that the binary opposition of

nature and culture is a way to categorise all human food practices. The present thesis

instead surmises that the nature/culture divide lies beneath the dominant eating practices of

many societies, but it is not an organising principle that should be generalised to all human

societies, because the meanings and the distinction between nature and culture are not

historically fixed but have developed over time. Thus ‘our notions of nature and culture are

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themselves ‘cooked’’(Ashley et al. 2004, p.40). This critique will be discussed in greater

detail in the concluding discussion, where it will be analysed together with Klaus Eder’s

The Social Construction of Nature (1996 [1988]). Eder’s text is significant to this historical

critique of Lévi-Strauss, because Eder examines the nature/culture divide in relation to the

historical trajectories of industrial society’s food practices.

1 All page numbers henceforth refer to RC except where otherwise indicated. 2 The current thesis justifies the use of Lévi-Strauss’s RC by highlighting the fertile relationship between sociology and anthropology, especially in regard to the study of food. Anthropologists have had a long interest in food because they recognise its ‘central role in many cultures’ (Counihan & Van Esterik 1997, p.37). The anthropology of food has deep roots, with Edward Burnett Tylor (1878 [1865]) planting the seeds for the subject when he argued the fact, disputed at the time, that cooking qualified as a human universal. Twenty years later John G. Bourke produced the anthropology of food’s first detailed paper The Urine Dance of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico (1920 [1881]). Since then Anthropologists have demonstrated how food is connected with economy, power, kinship, and human thought, and through their early studies they established a strong tradition (see Counihan & Van Esterik 1997; Douglas 1978 [1975]; Firth 1934; Fortes & Fortes 1936; Richards 1932; Rozin 1999; Sahlins 1972; Weismantel 1988). Sociology is now catching up, and food is recognised and researched by anthropologists and sociologists alike for its numerous meanings and functions including: social, psychological, cultural, economic, religious, artistic, and political (Rozin 1999, p.22). 3 The nature/culture divide was an important binary opposition in Lévi-Strauss’s CT and will be discussed in greater detail on p.54. 4 In Lévi-Strauss’s Totemism (1969 [1962]) he refers specifically to the choice of animals as totems for their symbolic value rather than their economic value as food products. However in his later works, as this thesis chapter will show, Levi-Strauss’s greatly demonstrated that what is good to eat (bonnes à manger) is also good to think (bonnes à penser) with (1969 [1962]). 5 The influence of Jakobson (1956) and Saussure’s (1974 [1916]) linguistics will be considered in greater detail on p.45. 6 Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995 [1912]) has been influential for later generations of sociologists, especially in Jeffrey Alexander’s strong program of cultural sociology (see Alexander 2003, 2007; Arnason 2010). 7 Langue is ‘the individual natural language’ regarded as a structure or system’, while parole is the ‘individual speech acts, or acts of language as a process’ (Lechte 2008, p.180). 8 Bob Ashley (et al.) provide a sound explanation of Saussure’s concept. They explain that ‘the relationship between the signifier and the signified is an arbitrary one: there is no inherent reason why, for example, the three black marks ‘p-i-g’ should signify a non-ruminant omnivorous ungulate…instead, Saussure proposes that ‘p-i-g’ signifies the mental concept ‘pig’ only by virtue of its difference from other signifiers (Ashley et al. 2004, p.3). In this way ‘pig’ signifies the ‘oinking animal’ because it is not ‘pug’, ‘fig’, ‘pit’, or various other signifiers. 9 Lévi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind (1966b) is related to his study in RC and CT as in this work he argued against the dominant idea that there is a difference between the ‘pre-logical’ mentality of primitive individuals and the ‘logical’ mentality of the modern individual. Leach explains that Lévi-Strauss sought to show that ‘‘primitive’ people are no more mystical in their approach to reality than we are…likewise they are able to make sense of the events of daily life by reference to codes composed of things outside themselves – such as the attributes of animal species’ (1996

64

[1970], p.101). In essence Lévi-Strauss asserts that primitive people are just as sophisticated as we are, but they simply use a distinct system of notation. 10 Especially with chef Heston Blumenthal developing new cooking techniques daily.

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CHAPTER 3: The Symbolic Frameworks of Food:

Klaus Eder This chapter will examine Klaus Eder’s classic but neglected work The Social Construction

of Nature (1996 [1988]) (Hereafter referred to as SCN).1 Eder’s text has been selected for

analysis because like Lévi-Strauss’s works, SCN is one of the very few texts that explicitly

considers the nature/culture divide with the problematic of ‘food’ as a main category in its

analysis. Furthermore this thesis draws attention to Eder’s social theory of nature and the

environment because of its relevance to current debates in sociology (see Ferguson 2005;

Irwin 2001; Macnaghten & Urry 1998; Sutton 2004). SCN is important because it offers a

reinterpretation of the relationship between nature, culture, and society, and it links cultural

interpretation to the environmental problems of food in modern industrial societies.

The present chapter will hermeneutically reconstruct SCN. From this analysis this study

will critically discuss the insights wrought from the respective analyses of Lévi-Strauss and

Eder’s work in order to begin to configure a theoretical framework that can elaborate an

environmental sociology of food. This chapter will first consider Eder’s intellectual

sources. It will then contextualise SCN within his broader project, and situate it into wider

debates on modernity and critical theory. Eder’s argument will then be critically analysed,

which will lead into the concluding discussion that will consider SCN together with Lévi-

Strauss’s RC and CT. Through the analysis of these works together, this study will show

that the cultural meanings of food provide an important, but hitherto marginalised lens,

through which to interpret the nature/culture divide. It will argue that it is important to

investigate the underlying constitutions of meanings that inform our social practices

towards the natural environment at a core level. As a result the concluding discussion will

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show that this thesis provides a preliminary step towards elaborating a conceptual

framework that is more adequately equipped to investigate an environmental sociology of

food.

Intellectual Sources

Before critically engaging with SCN it is important to consider Eder’s intellectual sources,

and to contextualise his work by understanding how he came to write SCN. Klaus Eder is

professor of sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin.

He was a student of Jürgen Habermas at Frankfurt University, and considered part of the

third generation of critical theory (Anderson 2011; Strydom 1993). One of his first

publications Die Entstehung Staatlich Organisierter Gesellschaften: Ein Beitrag zu einer

Theorie Sozialer Evolution (1976) was a contribution to the theory of social evolution,

which analysed the emergence of state-orientated societies. The work of Habermas and

critical theory more broadly were central intellectual sources for Eder’s intellectual

trajectory, and now require a brief overview to properly contextualise SCN.

Recalling the discussion of critical theory in the methodology section of this thesis, critical

theory in a narrow sense refers to the work of German neo-Marxist academics of the

‘Frankfurt School’ who placed an emphasis on critiquing society and culture. Jürgen

Habermas was initially a part of the original Frankfurt School’s inner circle, however he

became unsatisfied with the first generation’s pessimistic conclusions, particularly Adorno

and Horkheimer’s perspective in Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002 [1944]). His objection

emerged from his post-war outlook, as the world, now full of new social and political

possibilities, looked very distinct to the one described by Adorno and Horkheimer

(Anderson 2011; Elliott 2009). Habermas specifically argued that the negative view of the

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early Frankfurt School was not just a conclusion of a solemn observation of historical

processes, rather it arose from incorrect theoretical assumptions (Whitebook 1979, p.41).

He suggested that if Adorno and Horkheimer’s perspective was correct, if the

Enlightenment, which was meant to cause liberty and plenitude to humans, was from its

formation, also bound to bring imprisonment and suffering, then critical theory is left in a

quandary. Habermas’s theories are an attempt to resolve the problems of the first

generation of critical theory, but he also wished to retain its original perspective and

maintain some elements of its diagnosis of social problems. It is beyond the scope of the

present work to provide a detailed account of Habermas’s theoretical developments, so this

chapter will now focus on his concepts that are relevant to the premise of Eder’s SCN.2

Habermas examined how in modernity the domain of science led to the demise of the

Church’s sovereignty, and was eventually replaced by the epistemic power of natural

science and reason (Porter 2001). From this understanding he determined that modernity

brings a huge expansion in the amount and quality of specialised knowledge. However at

the same time this knowledge becomes detached from everyday life, to the extent that the

gap between what we know and how we live widens (Habermas 1996 [1981], p.45). From

this understanding Habermas describes modernity as an ‘unfinished project’, in which he

explains that:

The project of modernity as it was formulated by the philosophers of

the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century consist in the relentless

development of the objectivating sciences, of the universalist foundations

of morality and law, and of the autonomous art, all in accord with their

own immanent logic… Partisans of the Enlightenment…could still

entertain the extravagant expectation that the arts and sciences would

not merely promote the control of forces of nature, but also further the

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understanding of the self and world, the progress of morality, justice in

social institutions, and even human happiness (Habermas 1996 [1981],

p.45).

However Habermas examined twentieth century society and he noted that little of this

optimism remains, and so he asked, ‘Should we continue to hold fast to the intentions of the

Enlightenment, however fractured they may be, or should we rather relinquish the entire

project of modernity?’ (1996 [1981]. p.46). In response he argued that modernity is

‘unfinished’ because it is an ongoing process that should not be reversed, but he also

explains that we should not accept every development it produces. Modernity is a ‘project’

because Habermas maintains that we must critically measure the cultural, technological,

and economic potential of modern society, and this must be done in light of secular

humanitarian ideals (Finlayson 2005, p.66). Hence Habermas determined that modernity is

an ‘unfinished project’. Elliott explains that Habermas believed in ‘the basic assumption of

the Enlightenment − particularly [that] the expansion of the spheres of freedom and

solidarity’ were enough to transform society, and so he adjusted critical theory to consider

language, communication, and rationality as a way to bring about a radical social change

(Elliott 2009, p.158). 3 Habermas drew attention to everyday interaction and

communication between people as a major source of emancipatory impulses (Anderson

2011, p.5).4 He sought to identify the general and universal features of communicative

action, and he aimed to develop a communicative rationality and a progressive learning

process, which he believed could foster autonomy and liberate human interaction from

dominion.

As mentioned earlier Klaus Eder was a student of Jürgen Habermas at Frankfurt University.

As a younger critical theorist and student, Eder worked with Habermas on his theory of

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sociocultural evolution (Strydom 1993, p.304). However during the late 1970s and early

1980s, Eder began to move away from Habermas’s thought. Eder’s shift is described by

Piet Strydom as a radical change, because within a decade Eder moved from uncritically

accepting Habermas’s ‘universal historical and general societal applicability’ of the theory

of social evolution, to becoming one of its sharpest critics (Strydom 1993, p.304-305).

Eder’s connection to Habermas’s theory was split for the first time in his book, Die

Vergesellschaftung der Natur: Studien zur sozialen Evolution der praktischen Vernunft

(1988), which in 1996 was revised, enlarged, and translated into English as The Social

Construction of Nature: A Sociology of Ecological Enlightenment (1996 [1988]).

Eder’s critique and development of Habermas’s theory is evident throughout his

intellectual trajectory. His numerous works develop a macrosociology with an emphasis on

historical and comparative studies, European sociological research, and structural analysis

(see Eder 1993; 2001; 2002). Much of his research is from the field of political sociology,

as he considers democracy, social movements, social structure, and collective action (see

Eder 1991 [1985]; 1993; 1999; 2006). However in the late 1980s his attention to social

movements provoked his interest in the environment, and he became concerned with

modern industrial society’s ‘increasingly violent and destructive’ relationship to nature (see

Eder 1990a; 1990b; 1995; 1996 [1988]; Eder & Kousis 2001). From this concern he

developed a unique interpretation of nature and what he terms ‘ecological reason’ that he

posits in SCN.

The Social Construction of Nature

SCN argues that although environmental problems and approaches have been apparent for a

long time, both industrial and developing countries’ relationships to nature are becoming

70

increasingly harmful. Eder originally published SCN in Germany in 1988, at a time when

new social movements arose and awareness of environmental issues became important

(Anderson 2011; Touraine 1971, 1981).5 Most answers to the current environmental

problem have been offered by economics, technology, and politics, but in SCN Eder argues

for a cultural account. Eder was one of the first sociologists to argue for a cultural

approach to the environment, and in SCN he attempts to formulate a concept of practical

reason through the ‘reconstruction of the cultural foundations of man’s relationship to

nature’ (p.x). It is with this cultural underpinning that Eder’s intentions in SCN are two-

fold. Firstly, he provides the foundations of a social critique of ecological reason through a

comparative analysis of the relationship to nature in various societies, and secondly, he

determines the conditions that have so far hindered environmental learning processes

(p.vii). Eder pursues his argument by organising his text into three sections. In part one,

Eder builds the foundations of cultural theory to critique ecological reason.6 In part two, he

questions the logic of cultural practices of the appropriation of nature through a

comparative analysis of food taboos. However in part three, Eder shifts his methodological

perspective to consider the consequences of the spirit of environmentalism on politics in

modern society. This empirical perspective moves beyond the scope of this thesis, and so

this chapter will only briefly consider this third part to segue into the concluding

discussion.

Reason is a central idea in SCN and at this point requires further elaboration. In classical

philosophical terms, reason is distinguished into three domains of human activity;

theoretical reason, practical reason, and technical reason (Millgram 2001; Taylor 1995).

Theoretical reason concerns the use of reason to investigate and hypothesise truth and what

to believe. Practical reason is the use of reason to determine how to act and to decide

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whether a course of action is worth implementing. Technical reason simply attempts to

find the best means for a given end. Eder, in a similar manner to Horkheimer, Adorno, and

Habermas before him, were all interested in practical reason, and sought to uncover the

pathologies of society that are based in the fragmentation and fragility of reason. As

mentioned previously, Adorno and Horkheimer had a pessimistic view of society, and from

this outlook they argued that technical reason, and the fetters of capitalism and technocratic

bureaucracy dominate modern society and nature. In contrast to Adorno and Horkheimer’s

approach, Habermas believed that the way to emancipate society from domination was

through practical reason. Habermas linked the disrupted interplay of reason and

irrationality to the fundamental forces of communication and language, and he aimed to

rescue communicative rationality through his unfinished project of modernity (Elliott 2009,

p.178). However in Habermas’s approach there is no place for the environment, because he

views, along with many critical theorists, that the inclusion of nature is the negation of

reason (see Whitebook 1979). In this regard Eder departs from Habermas and places the

social relation to nature at the centre of contemporary society. He considers that the

changes in society’s relationship to nature could give rise to new forms of modernisation

and politics. From this understanding he critiques Habermas’s notion of communicative

reason, because ‘despite all [the] communication on ecological matters, we have remained

culturally naïve ‘Philistines’ in our interaction with nature’ (p.viii). Eder argues that

society is symbolically organised, and he contends that cultural meanings may be a way to

reconstruct practical reason. It is from this insight that Eder begins his critique of

ecological reason and argues that it needs to be radicalised by cultural theory.

In SCN, Eder develops his argument through a strong critique of ecological reason. Eder

explains that ecological reason has developed as a response to the ecological crisis, and its

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general idea is that the pollution of nature needs to be limited in order to sustain the planet

for future generations (p.vii). However Eder is concerned that ecological reason is merely

a euphemism of utilitarian rationality (p.57). In this way he explains:

The issue is whether this ecological reason will become part of a form of

practical reason that can avoid the pitfalls of utilitarian rationality. What is

at stake it whether ecological reason can be connected with an appropriate

‘ecological’ ethics. If this were to succeed, then an ecological ethics could

no longer be reduced to a utilitarian ethics. Then the seducibility of morality

by knowledge, that characteristic of modern utilitarian reason, could no

longer continue to be the characteristic of the social evolution of practical

reason in modernity. The question of whether, despite all the knowledge

now available to us, we are producing an ecological reason today from

which an ecological morality is absent therefore compels a renewed

critique of ideology: a critique of ecological reason (p.57).

Eder question ecological reason when he considers that the ‘exploitation discourse of

industrialism’ and ‘the pollution discourse of environmentalism’ have stemmed from the

same utilitarian perspective of nature (p.vii). According to Eder both perspectives and

interactions with nature are exploitive. This argument echoes that of Max Weber (see

Weber 1985 [1930]), and more recently in the work of Ulrich Beck (see Beck 1991; 1992;

1995; 1996). Eder contends that the modern culture of nature is controlled by technical

reason and an instrumental rationality, which is so deeply embedded that it has even filtered

into the environmental movement. Eder explains that although ecological reason advocates

a more ‘rational’ engagement with nature, it still judges nature based on what it can endure,

and so modernity is unable to consider ‘nature’ as anything more that an ‘object’ of human

needs (p.vii). Noel Castree indicates that this is a common concern of radical

environmentalists, including deep ecologists or eco-Marxists, who ‘generally point to the

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failure of technocratic environmentalism to get to grips with the mass industrialism, mass

consumption, and capitalist production logic fundamentally causing environmental

degradation’ (1997, p.268). Eder agrees, but what makes his analysis innovative is his

resolve that the environmental problems of modern industrialism must be situated in their

cultural context in order to be understood accurately. At the time of SCN’s publication (i.e.

1988) this brought new insights to bear on sociological analyses of the environment, and in

this way it is a pioneering argument.

Eder argues that, ‘Modernity’s characteristic pride in dominating nature has caused us to

forget that we are living in a culture that more or less unconsciously ‘forces’ us into a self-

destructive relationship with nature’ (p.vii-viii). The central idea here is ‘unconsciously’,

because for Eder, ecological reason does not lead to an alternative approach to nature,

rather it reproduces the ‘long-standing and culturally deep-rooted attitudes and modes of

action’ that further society’s ‘self-destructive relationship with nature’ (p.vii). Eder

surmises that ecological reason cannot solve this destructive course, as it is simply the

newest form of practical (technocratic) reason. Following Weber (1985 [1930]), Eder

connects ecological reason to the Protestant spirit, as he considers that it emerged from the

same utilitarian perspective of nature. Although as Bronislaw Szerszynski explains, it has

now been enlightened ‘by ecological awareness of the prudential reasons to protect nature

for human benefit’, which Eder views is a ‘further rationalization of the instrumental

relation to nature promoted by Protestantism’ (Szerszynski 2005, p. 153). Eder argues

against this Protestant spirit of ecological reason. He proposes that we need to search deep

underneath the surface of our practical engagement with nature to rediscover the underlying

symbolic dimensions and cultural codes that shape our practical interaction with nature. In

this way SCN questions ‘the naturalistic analysis of the relationship between nature and

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society [and opposes it with] a culturalist interpretation of this relationship [that views]

nature as something that is constituted symbolically rather than objectively given’ (p.9). It

is from this perspective that Eder seeks to produce a communicative type of rationality that

moves beyond the nature and society relationship of domination, and shifts towards a new

‘environmentally friendly’ cultural order (p.10).

Eder elaborated his cultural approach to nature in the late 1980s. Since that time several

theorists have adopted a cultural perspective (see Bird 1987; Castree & Braun 2001; Ross

1978) towards nature, which resonates with the general ‘cultural turn’ over the last decade

in the human sciences. In various ways these other studies have ‘unearthed’ sites in which

nature is materially and discursively constructed in modern society. Eder’s social

construction of nature remains an important contribution to the cultural interpretation of

nature, but as stated in the literature review, social constructionism is ‘the bread and butter

of sociology’. Therefore it is necessary to examine how Eder’s use of social

constructionism differs to others. Recalling the discussion of social constructionism vs.

critical realism in chapter one, the common idea of social constructionism is that our

interaction and understanding of nature are, to a great extent, socially produced (see

Everdeen 1992; Hannigan 2006; Irwin 2001; Macnaghten & Urry 1998; Smith 1997; Tester

1991). Mick Smith argues that it is unmistakably clear that our experiences and

interpretations of nature are socially produced, when he explains that:

Either ‘nature’ denotes ‘the entire system of things’ in which case everything we do

is natural (including one must presume, nuclear testing, pesticide spraying, and so

on) or, people arbitrarily select from and read into nature what they will, ignoring

countervailing examples…[and] they operate with a particular and partial reading

of nature without recognising that this conception is, in part at least, a social

construction which mirrors their own predilections (Smith 1997, p.164).

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This is a common critique of environmentalism as once nature is considered a social

construct, any discussion about the ‘intrinsic value’ or the ‘natural limit’ of nature can be

regarded as an ideologically questionable effort to limit human freedom, which causes an

uncertain terrain for political agenda (Castree 1997; Smith 1997). From this critique, Smith

emphasises that an important start for environmental politics is to consider how nature has

been constructed throughout history and in various cultures (Sessions 1995; Smith 1997).

Eder takes a similar approach in his comparative analysis of food taboos and customs in

different societies and eras, because he emphasises the cultural/symbolic meanings of

nature and food as they appear within human societies.

Eder’s social construction of nature breaks new ground through his detailed historical

analysis of culture. It also differs to other social constructionist approaches to nature,

because of his emphasis on food and ‘consumption’. He argues that our consumptive

habits and preferences are not predetermined by human needs, rather they are culturally

constructed and symbolically mediated (Castree 1997; Smith 1997). Eder builds a

thorough framework in which nature is socially constructed, but his form of social

constructionism is self-reflexive, because he believes ‘critical theoretical reason must

always make sure of [its] social function, and that means it must infuse theoretical reason

with sociologically enlightened reflexivity’ (p.50). This approach allows him to defend

environmentalism’s moral and political particularity, and it also permits him to still provide

a realistic account about the rationality of environmental practice (Ney 1998; Smith 1997).

In Eder’s social construction of nature he recognises that society has an ‘unthematisable’

symbolic foundation, and according to Szerszynski’s interpretation of Eder’s text, ‘we

operate [in practice] in accordance not with an abstract ecological rationality but with a

concrete ecological morality informed by unexamined symbols and metaphors’

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(Szerszynski 2005, pp.153-154). Yet Eder explains that despite all the knowledge modern

society has gained, it is still producing an ecological reason that lacks ecological morality

(p.57). Eder explains that it is tempting to restore the Protestant spirit of nature with a

‘Catholic spirit’, or a traditional, or ‘Romantic’ interaction with nature, but Eder indicates

that ‘such an escape’ will be avoided in his text (p.x). He explains his reason for avoiding

this ‘restorational’ approach with reference to the theoretical purpose of SCN, which is:

To sketch out the foundations of a social critique of ecological reason by

starting from a comparative analysis of the relationship to nature in

different societies. Such a critique is the opposite of restoration. It may

use elements of tradition, but it does not remain bound to them. This

prevents any restorational intent (p.x).

Eder’s simultaneous use of practical (non-technocratic) reason together with cultural values

are central to the problematic of modernity. Eder’s text engages in questions surrounding

modernity, including questions of the Enlightenment, reason and rationality, and the

Romantic emphasis on meaning, which at this point requires discussion.7

The world was once viewed as a given or a ‘taken for granted horizon’, but through the

Enlightenment, modernity becomes ‘inherently problematic and problematizable’ (Adams

2011, p.8).8 Before the Enlightenment, Western civilization was based on faith in God,

tradition, and authority, but with the Enlightenment, these deep-rooted values and beliefs

were questioned, and in many cases, superseded by new concepts from philosophical

reason. 9 Johnathon Israel explains that in the Enlightenment a ‘general process of

rationalization and secularization set in which rapidly overthrew theology’s age-old

hegemony in the world of study’ (2001, p.4).10 This period, and the notions of ‘progress’

and the ‘improvement of society’ that came with it, resulted in two distinct lines of

enlightenment thought (Arnason 1991 [1984]; Porter 2001). The first saw the benefits of

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progressing towards a rational society with autonomy, conscience, individuality,

democracy, and the removal of religious authority from the state (Israel 2001; Whitebook

1979). In contrast the second argued for a ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ that would critically

review and support the old models of thought and systems of values (Israel 2010, p.15).

A major aspect of the Enlightenment involved a ‘disembedding from nature’, and the

conquest of the environment in which the ‘visions of nature’ are cleared of meaning and

viewed as surplus, or as an ‘Other’, to an excessively rationalised world (Adams 2011, p.8).

This second line of thought resonated with the artistic and intellectual movement of

Romanticism. Johann P. Arnason explains that:

Romanticism in the widest sense of the term… is the defence of

meaningfulness against subsumption under the meaning-destroying

mechanisms of an Enlightenment geared towards the expansion and

rationalization of power and embodied in the reified economic and

political structures of the modern world (Arnason 1991 [1984], p.210).

These two lines of thought are central to the problematic of modernity, because instead of

reducing ‘modernity’ to ‘the Enlightenment’, as other theorist have done (see Adorno and

Horkheimer 2002 [1944]; Bauman 1989, 2000; Habermas 1996 [1981]), Arnason argues

that an image of modernity needs to encompass both Romanticism and the Enlightenment

(Arnason 1991 [1984]). The Enlightenment and Romanticism should not to be considered

as mere historical epochs, but as cultural currents than can be characterised by an emphasis

on reason and rationality (Enlightenment) and meaning and the imagination (Romanticism)

(Arnason 1991 [1984]). At this point, considering Arnason’s innovative thoughts on ‘the

cultural horizons of modernity’ may help to reconfigure Eder’s perspective (Adams 2011,

p.138).

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Like Eder, Arnason was also a student of Habermas, and his cultural hermeneutics was a

direct response to Habermas’s theory of communicative action and his notion of modernity

as the ‘unfinished project of the Enlightenment’ (Adams, Smith, & Vlahov 2011, p.5).

Arnason understood modernity as a ‘field of tensions’, in which Romanticism is not in

opposition to the Enlightenment, rather Arnason argues that Romanticism and the

Enlightenment are to be understood as cultural currents constitutive of modernity itself.

They exist as an underlying ‘constitutive polarity of modern structures of consciousness

that can express itself in highly different constellations’ (Arnason 1991 [1984], p.210). As

Suzi Adams interprets from Arnason’s thought, the Enlightenment and Romanticism are

not reduced to historical or intellectual movements, rather they are ‘elaborated more

broadly as cultural currents’, which are essential elements of modernity’s field of tensions

(2011, p.138). Arnason explains that by understanding that modernity is organised around

the ‘radical conflict of interpretations’, it justifies a radically decentred perspective of the

world, and it also offers a new direction for the comparison with other traditions and

worldviews (1991 [1984], p.211).

Although Eder may disagree with Arnason’s understanding of modernity, the present thesis

proposes that Arnason’s thought is pertinent to Eder’s SCN because in his comparative

analysis of food taboos and customs he establishes two fundamental and conflicting

culinary cultures that coexist in modern society. The first is the ‘carnivorous culture’,

which communicates a utilitarian and dominant treatment of nature (the Enlightenment),

while the ‘vegetarian culture’ prescribes a harmonious relationship with nature

(Romanticism) (p.132). Eder explains that the carnivorous culture is dominant, but he

argues that in modern society, the symbolic effectiveness and power is determined by the

interplay and conflict of these cultures (p.138). Although Eder does not refer to Arnason’s

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thought in SCN, this thesis argues that these conflicting culinary cultures are constructions

of the world through cultural meanings (1991 [1984]). Jeffery C. Alexander and Piotr

Sztompka, for example, recognise that Eder draws from both the Enlightenment and

Romantic strain, when he identifies ‘a cultural conflict between the theoretical antinomies

of rationality and romanticism, evolution and equilibrium…and utilitarian reason versus

communicative reason’ (Alexander & Sztompka 1990, p.6).

Eder argues that rather than depending on practical (non-technocratic) reason, sociology

needs to consider the social ‘locus’ of environmental ‘irrationality’ in the modern cultural

constructions of nature (Ney 1998, p.1072). However, he questions ‘where do we start?’ as

he believes theoretical reason can only provide ‘enlightenment on the illusion tied to

[practical reason]’ (p.1). With this in mind Eder proposes that: Sociological analysis, which treats the societal relationship to nature as a

problem of practical reason, first requires a radicalization of the sociological

perspective in terms of cultural theory. The point is to reconstruct the symbolic

forms in which nature is represented, beyond the utilitarian relationship to

nature which has become the cultural norm (p.2).

This reconceptualisation overcomes two obstacles in the nature/culture divide, firstly it

moves past sociology’s naturalistic tendency to view nature as the ‘other’ to society, and

secondly it concentrates on the way societies symbolically structure their encounter with

nature. Steven Ney argues from his interpretation of SCN, that Eder wants to recover a

philosophical notion of practical reason in sociological analysis that provides

comprehensive sociocultural constructions of nature (1998, p.1072). Eder achieves this by

locating rational learning processes, however he does not find these in ‘the evolution of

rational ideas about nature’, but in ‘the evolution of cultural constructions of nature’ (Ney

1998, p.1072). Eder determines that the cultural significance of the Protestant spirit for the

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modern relationship to nature becomes very evident when the symbolic significance of

nature is explored in different eras and cultures (p.viii). This research indicates that the

modern relationship to nature has decreased, to such an extent, that nature, as a symbolic

form, has no significance of its own. Eder is concerned that this utilitarian culture now

endeavours to control the ‘most elementary’ and at the same time the ‘most social’ aspect

of our interaction with nature, that is, the culture of food (p.viii).

Culinary Morality

From the discussion of Eder’s work thus far it is clear that a major premise of SCN is that

we must become conscious of the symbolic foundations of our relationship to nature if we

want to discover the learning processes that can change our destructive relationship to

nature (p.viii). This led Eder to present a compelling case that food is eminently cultural

and a valuable way to examine modern society’s relationship to nature. He shows that

nature and society’s self-destructive relations are reflected in our eating practices, as ‘eating

is not only material, but a symbolic appropriation of nature…[and] an elementary form of

the transition from nature to culture’ (p.ix). Eder explains that our daily cultural practices

are central to a critique of ecological rationality, and so in part two of SCN he provides an

extensive anthropological analysis of culinary morality that draws on work from Mary

Douglas, Marvin Harris, and Marshall Sahlins (see Douglas 2002 [1966]; Harris & Ross

1987; Sahlins 1976).

Eder believes that eating is essential to the ‘civilizational process’ of humanity (see Elias

1978; Mennell 1996 [1985]). He considers that food taboos are ‘culturally deep-seated’,

and they communicate ‘a collective moral sentiment’ that exists before any ‘moral

consciousness’ in a society can be formed (pp.58-59). Eder argues that food taboos are

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norms at the ‘interface between nature and culture’ (p.59). He questions the significance

and function of food taboos, and he approaches his investigation in three steps. Firstly he

reflects on several other explanations of these food taboos, which include, rationalistic,

functionalistic, and structuralist interpretations. Eder explains that the purpose of this

consideration is to assess why food taboos exist in the first place (p.59). His second step is

a comparative analysis of the food taboos from the Jivaro Indians in Brazil, the food taboos

in classical Judaism, and the food taboos in modern Western European culture.

From this analysis Eder’s third step is to investigate the ‘morality implicit’ in these taboo

systems. He discovers that the significance between what is edible or inedible portrays a

‘symbolic border between society and non-society’, and ‘between symbolic order and

symbolic disorder’ (p.73). Eder perceives that the standard that distinguishes the human

world from nature is ‘reasonability’, and that ‘reason is part of society. Unreason belongs

to nature [and] those who do not fit into the social order are considered unreasonable’

(p.105). However Eder explains that this distinction between reason and unreason ‘makes

it possible to make the unreasonable the objects of the reasonable’, and so Eder questions

the rationality of food taboos (p.105). He specifically asks: ‘Are the food taboos rational in

view of the natural environment of a society?’, ‘What are the consequences of food taboos

for the reproduction of society in nature?’, and ‘Do food taboos destroy this natural

environment or do they contribute to its reproduction?’ (p.105). Eder contends that the

attempt to determine the rationality of food taboos risks leading to unrestrained relativism,

and so he conceives ecological rationality more narrowly. In this manner he considers that

food taboos are rational if they:

Enable and protect communication under the conditions of differentiation of

society away from nature. Successful communication produces social

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relationships without conflict and solves disputes without force and repression.

In simple, as well as in traditional and modern societies we find rationality

and irrationality in the sense of successful or failing communications (p.106).

From this understanding Eder returns to his analysis of food taboos and he interprets that

both the Jivaro tribe and ancient Hebrews were able to establish successful communication.

However in modern society our food taboos are based on premises that impede this

rationality, because we ‘continue to act as if what we eat [has] no communicative

significance’ (p.106). Despite these negative findings Eder observes the way modern

environmental movements argue against the exploitation of nature, and so he determines

that ‘the rationality issue is still undecided’ (p.106).

It is evident from Eder’s comparative analysis that he considers food taboos to be a means

of communicating social order. Eder’s excursus also shows that in modern society there

are two coexisting culinary cultures. One that communicates a utilitarian treatment of

nature, and the other prescribes a harmonious relationship with nature (p.132). He terms

the former ‘the carnivorous culture’, and the latter ‘the vegetarian culture’. Eder identifies

that the carnivorous culture developed from the ancient Greek tradition with its emphasis

on blood rites, while the vegetarian culture stemmed from the Jewish tradition and its

restrictive use of bloody rituals and strict rules of purity. He explains that these two

cultures are the foundation of the environmental debates in the public sphere. The first

tradition has become dominant in modern society, and in this way nature is purely viewed

as a material object to be moulded and conquered. The second tradition has remained at the

level of collective consciousness, but was activated through the recent ecological crisis,

which brought the realisation that nature can no longer be taken for granted (p.132).

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Eder shows that in modern society power is established through the ‘interplay of

carnivorous and vegetarian culture’, and we reproduce this ‘modern social contract’ in our

everyday culinary actions (p.138). He argues that instead of finding the culture of

modernity in intellectual rationalisations and self-description, we can understand culture in

its daily function. In this way Eder determines that when food is the object of symbolic

conflicts ‘the implicit meaning becomes explicit’ (p.139). Therefore by drawing attention

to the ‘generally unconscious cultural presuppositions of these conflicts’, Eder argues that

we may be able to shift the dominating symbolic power of the carnivorous culture to the

alternative vegetarian culture (p.132). Eder’s explanation of modern society’s potential to

move towards this alternative culture leads into the third part of SCN, which will now be

briefly considered.

In part three of SCN Eder’s discussion shifts to consider political aspects, asking whether

environmentalism is changing modern culture. Eder considers the way nature has been

framed and communicated in modern society, and he argues that these frames of reference

have been institutionalised to the extent that they have become ecological ideology (p.6).

This shift has brought the carnivorous and vegetarian cultures of modernity into conflict,

and so they must now find a new way to coexist. With this in mind Eder examines the

environmental movement in contemporary Western society, and he considers practical

politics and the possibilities for a non-utilitarian culture of nature (p.163). Eder then

investigates the consequences of the spirit of environmentalism on politics in modern

society, and he argues that it may have the potential to develop a new ecological

masterframe. This third part of SCN requires a far more detailed analysis than this chapter

has presented due to the scope of this thesis. Nevertheless, what this brief discussion has

shown is how Eder links and situates his more theoretical discussion into the practical

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realm of political and social change, which matches the overarching aim of the present

author’s research programme.

SCN is a rich text that contains extensive insights for those from various disciplines that are

concerned with the environmental problems that contemporary society faces. However the

insights that Eder presents are not sufficient in and of themselves for an adequate

theoretical framework for an environmental sociology of food. For this reason the

concluding chapter ‘The Elementary Forms of Food: Conclusions and Future Directions’

will critically analyse Eder’s SCN together with Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked

(1970 [1964] and ‘The culinary triangle’ (1966) to consider how the cultural meanings of

food can be used to investigate society’s relationship to nature, which will provide a

preliminary step towards elaborating a theoretical framework for an environmental

sociology of food.

1 All page numbers henceforth refer to this text, except where otherwise indicated. 2 For a detailed analysis of Habermas’s theory (see McCarthy 1978; Nordquist 1986; Outhwaite 1994; Pussey 1987; White 1995) 3 Habermas’s argument that language, communication, and rationality need to be included in critical theory is evident in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989) and in The Theory of Communicative Action (vol.1, 1984 [1981]; vol. 2, 1987 [1981]). 4 Emancipatory impulses refer to conditions that may bring about the creation of genuine democratic institutions and could endure the destructive effects of capitalism and state administration (Anderson 2011; Finlayson 2005). 5 Alain Touraine has had a long-standing interest in social movements, and through his research on South American and Polish social movements he argued that society shapes its future through its social struggles (see Touraine 1977; 1981). 6 Eder’s use of the term ‘ecological reason’ will be explained on p.72. 7 ‘Modernity’ is a contested term that often refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses consequent to the Age of Enlightenment. To some degree, modernity describes an era (or a set of ideas related to an era). Modernity was a topic of great debate in the 1980s, in which theorists argued whether the era of modernity had past, whether it was still occurring, and, if the era of modernity had ended, it questioned whether this shift was beneficial. There has also been continuous debate on modernity and multiple modernities (see, for example, Arnason 1991 [1984]; Eisenstadt 2002; Wagner 1999). However modernity is more than an era, it ‘designates the social, political, cultural, institutional, and psychological conditions that arise from certain historical processes’ (Finlayson 2005, p.63). Sociology as a discipline arose in direct response to the social problems of modernity (Harriss 2000, p.325). Although modernity is discussed as a ‘theory’, it is not an isolated thought, but an accumulation of ideas and notions that are ‘woven into all the

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various programmes’ (Finlayson 2005, p.63). For this reason the debates surrounding modernity are important to this discussion of Eder’s work as they were occurring at the time he published SCN. 8 The specific era of the Enlightenment has been contested, but it is generally thought to have occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries (Israel 2001; Porter 2001). 9 ‘Reason’ is a contested term, which is often conflated with ‘rationality’. For the purposes of the current discussion this thesis will view ‘reason’ as the capacity that human beings have to make sense of things, to determine and verify facts, and to shift or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs (Kompridis 2000, p.271). 10 Rationalisation is a process in which social actions become progressively more based on factors of efficiency and calculation rather than inspired from morals, emotions, customs, or tradition. In Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1985 [1930]) he established that rationalisation was the result of aims from Protestant denominations (in particular Calvinism) that focused on the rational means of economic profit as a way to cope with their ‘salvation anxiety’ (1985 [1930], p.136). Rationalisation is viewed as an ambivalent characteristic of modernity, which is largely seen in Western civilisation’s capitalist market, in the rational administration of the state and bureaucracy, and in the rapid growth of modern science and technology (Harriss 2000). In Weber’s Economy and Society (1978) he described that the ultimate impact of increased rationalisation was a society in which individuals were trapped in an ‘iron cage’ of rational control. In this way rationalisation does not generally denote what is actually ‘rational’ or ‘logical’, but a persistent quest for progress and goals, which in turn may disadvantage society (Ritzer 2004).

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CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS: The Elementary Forms of Food

This thesis asked ‘How can the social category of ‘food’ help to problematise the meanings

of the nature/culture divide in modern society?’. For this reason the project began by

contextualising the research question in the relevant literature from the sociology of nature,

environmental sociology, and the sociology of food. The first chapter specifically revealed

that the sociology of nature was developed as a response to the nature/culture divide in

sociology, but it has neglected to examine food as a significant part of this divide. From

this analysis the present thesis argued that the nature/culture divide needs to be

problematised with the social category and cultural meanings of food. In this way the

nature/culture dualism becomes less of a dichotomy and more of an interplay that can

engage in both social constructionist and critical realist perspectives. The literature review

also inspected environmental sociology and its approaches to food. It recognised that

although food is budding as an important aspect of environmental concerns, food is

commonly viewed as an aspect of larger environmental issues, instead of a central category

that fundamentally shapes approaches to the nature, culture, and the environment in modern

society.

The focus of the literature review then turned to examine the sociology of food and it

demonstrated that the growing sociological interest in the importance of food has meant

that food as a social category is increasingly problematised. A central question in the

sociology of food is whether it should be researched as an ‘object’ or a ‘subject’, and

whether food is a ‘natural’ or a ‘social’ construct (Ferguson 2005, p.680). Although the

diverse works in the sociology of food share an emphasis on the cultural and social

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significance of food, the literature review indicated that food is never “just” food, and so it

is not clear that texts in this field are discussing the same thing in a useful way. From this

analysis it was argued that the sociology of food requires a theoretical approach to give the

diversity of views a common framework. As a result this chapter determined that both

environmental sociology and the sociology of food have made significant contributions to

the sociological study of food, however neither subject has closely examined the concrete

social practices and cultural meanings of food as an environmental issue.

The present thesis thus proposed that a new social theory is needed to address the

deficiencies of the sociology of nature, environmental sociology, and the sociology of food.

It suggested moving towards an environmental sociology of food, which could examine the

cultural meanings and social practices of food, and also consider food as a serious

environmental issue that intersects both the broader industrial sphere and our everyday

lives. From this understanding the thesis argued that the first step towards developing a

new theoretical framework was to return to the nature/culture divide, and to reproblematise

and rethink it with the social category and cultural meanings of food as a central lens. It

specifically questioned: ‘How can the social category of ‘food’ help to problematise the

meanings of the nature/culture divide in modern society?’ It was decided that the most

appropriate method to approach this question, in the first instance, was to critically engage

with two ‘case studies’ in social theory that explicitly considered the nature/culture divide

and recognised ‘food’ as a major category in their respective analyses.

The texts selected for evaluation were Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked

(1970 [1964]) and ‘The culinary triangle’ (1966a), together with Klaus Eder’s The Social

Construction of Nature (1996 [1988]). In chapters two and three these texts were

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hermeneutically reconstructed to examine the ways in which Lévi-Strauss and Eder have

investigated the nature/culture divide with food as a social category. It is clear that both

theorists provide diverse interpretations of the social categories of food and the

nature/culture divide. For this reason the concluding discussion will now critically analyse

these texts together in order to extract valuable insights to consider the implications their

respective works might have towards an environmental sociology of food.

Lévi-Strauss

Lévi-Strauss’s theoretical connection between the techniques of cooking and his distinction

between nature and culture provides a vital contribution to the sociology of food because

his structuralist approach changed the study of food from merely observing its function in

society to exploring the underlying ‘meanings’ of food. This final chapter will now

reconstruct and rethink Lévi-Strauss’s insight from RC and CT, specifically, that cooking is

a medium which reveals the binary opposition of nature and culture as a universal structure

of the human mind. The purpose of this reconstruction is to consider how Lévi-Strauss’s

concepts contribute to reproblematising the meanings of the nature/culture divide in

modern society.

Lévi-Strauss produced his culinary triangle to demonstrate how cooking can be used to

conceptualise the distinction between nature and culture, and he argued that through the act

of cooking, people communicate that they are cultured and human, rather than ‘savage’ and

animal, or in his words ‘cooked’ instead of ‘raw’ (Lévi-Strauss 1970 [1964], p.164). Leach

explains that from this distinction Lévi-Strauss was questioning ‘How is it and why is it

that [human beings] who are a part of Nature, manage to see themselves as other than

Nature even though, in order to subsist, they must constantly maintain relations with

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Nature?’ (Leach 1996 [1970], p.109). Lévi-Strauss noted that ‘animals’ just eat food,

which for them is any available substance that their instincts categorise as ‘edible’. In

contrast human beings do not have such instincts, as once they are weaned from their

mother’s milk they require the mores of society to determine what is food and what is not,

and what foods should be eaten on various occasions (Leach 1996 [1970], p.42). This

notion that humanity is distinct from animality does not readily convert into ‘primitive’

languages, but in Lévi-Strauss’s study of myths and culinary practices he examined the

fundamental questions of ‘what is a human being?’ and ‘where does culture divide off from

nature?’ (Leach 1996 [1970], p.42). Lévi-Strauss observed that for centuries humans have

utilised fire in order to transform their food from a raw to a cooked state, but he recognised

that they do not need to cook their food. As a result he interpreted cooking as a way for

humans to symbolically demonstrate that they are human and not animal, civilised and not

uncivilised. He argued that fire and cooking are basic symbols that distinguish nature from

culture, such that the this binary opposition is always latent in humanity’s customs,

attitudes, and behaviours, even if they are not explicit.

However recalling the limitations of Lévi-Strauss’s approach, this thesis argued that Lévi-

Strauss’s distinction between nature and culture was in itself ‘cooked’, and this point

requires further discussion. Lévi-Strauss believed that underlying the cooking practices of

all human societies was the binary opposition of nature and culture. However his

distinction between nature and culture is historically constructed. Lévi-Strauss’s

understanding of ‘the cooked’ is cultural, and he considered it to be progressive and

civilised, while he perceived that ‘the raw’ is natural, and therefore it is regressive and

uncivilised (Lévi-Strauss 1970 [1964], p.164). This thesis argues that underlying Lévi-

Strauss’s approach are notions of civilised and uncivilised. Lévi-Strauss’s understanding of

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the transition from the raw to the cooked was a common idea in traditional societies, and

very distinct from those we have in contemporary society. Claude Fischler explains that

traditionally ‘raw foodstuffs had to be civilized or, so to say, tamed through culinary

processing in order to be fit for consumption’ (1980, p.946). In traditional societies the

natural environment was considered to be wild, uncivilised, and cruel, and thus it needed to

be conquered and tamed for humanity to progress (Cudworth 2003; Franklin 2002;

Macnaghten & Urry 1998; Sutton 2004).

However modern society’s culinary processes have increasingly shifted from the kitchen to

the factory. If one were to examine modern society’s cooking techniques, or rather its

industrialised and commercialised food system through Lévi-Strauss’s lens, our culinary

practices would be situated at the furthermost point of ‘the cooked’ (cultural side) of the

culinary triangle. Modern society would perhaps therefore be classified as ‘overcooked’ or

very cultured, but this cultural category has far more negative implications than Lévi-

Strauss’s idea of culture. Anne Murcott considers this negative implication of culture when

she remarks:

What is happening is that contemporary industrial society is being seen as over-

culturalised and its members [and the natural environment are] suffering the…

consequences of too much modernity in all aspects of lifestyle including their

diet. In line with this ‘diagnosis’, ‘health’ foods, more ‘natural’ foods are

presented as the appropriate antidote (Murcott 1982, p.205).

The modern concept of culture signifies a ‘nightmare’ of the dirty, tasteless, and

industrialised, while nature signifies the ‘pastoral dream’ of pure, fresh, and natural

(Everdeen 1992; Williams 1972). This understanding of the modern nature/culture divide

can be summarised in the dominant idea that ‘culture perverts nature’ (Fischler 1980,

p.942), which is markedly different to Lévi-Strauss’s trans-historical notion that ‘nature

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progresses to culture’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966a, p.587). Lévi-Strauss’s approach cannot

adequately categorise modern society’s concept of nature and culture, because the

nature/culture divide is no longer a sharp or clear distinction (Merleau-Ponty 1960, p.123).

The problem with Lévi-Strauss’s interpretation of the nature/culture divide is that he

considers it to be an unconscious binary opposition in all human thought. He does not

recognise that we ascribe meaning to nature, and so these meanings change and are

historically constructed on a symbolic level rather than on a literal level (Murcott 1982,

p.205). Fischler explains that humans feed ‘not only on proteins, fats, carbohydrates, but

also on symbols, myths and fantasies. The selection of [food] is made not only according

to physiological requirements, but also on the basis of cultural and social representations’

(1980, p.937). In this way society experiences, and furthermore consumes nature, but it

does so through our understandings that are mediated by our values, languages, social

imaginaries, and technologies (Hogan et al. 2010, p.337). Hence any approach to food as

an environmental issue must take into account the underlying constitutions of meanings

concerning food that inform our changing social practices at a core level. Eder emphasises

the significance of the cultural and symbolic meanings of food, and so this chapter will now

turn to consider his perspective.

Klaus Eder

In sharp contrast to Lévi-Strauss’s trans-historical understanding of the human condition,

Eder presents a historical trajectory by investigating the environmental crisis as a Western

historical phenomenon. Eder argues for a cultural interpretation of nature and society that

views ‘nature as something that is constituted symbolically rather than objectively given’

(1996 [1988], p.9). Although Lévi-Strauss considered modern society’s relationship to

nature to be ‘over-culturalised’, Eder argues that humans have remained ‘culturally naïve

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‘Philistines’’ in their interaction with nature (Eder 1996 [1988], p.viii). Lévi-Strauss and

Eder interpret and utilise the categories of nature, culture, and ‘food’ in very different ways.

Nevertheless according to Eder modern society’s relationship to nature is far from being

‘over-culturalised’ in the Lévi-Straussian sense, rather it is dominated by a utilitarian

perspective, such that modernity is unable to consider ‘nature’ as anything more than an

‘object’ of human needs (Eder 1996 [1988], p.vii). This thesis concurs with this notion,

and like Eder, is particularly concerned that, following Max Weber (1985 [1930]), the

increasing rationalisation and rationalising currents of modernity are flattening out contexts

of meaning, in general, and the symbolic significance, which is reproduced in our everyday

culinary actions (Eder 1996 [1988], p.viii). This has major consequences for the

environment, because our social categories and underlying cultural meanings of food

inform our social practices at a fundamental level. Although Eder’s analysis focused on the

environmental crisis from a Western historical perspective, it is now clear that

environmental problems are global issues that affect all societies beyond the West (see

Friedman 1993; Mintz 2002; Ritzer 2004; Wilk 2006).

Eder’s reinterpretation of the relationship between nature, culture, and society together with

an emphasis on the cultural and social significance of food is an important contribution to

the development of a new theoretical framework more suitable to the task of elaborating an

environmental sociology of food. The central tenets of this thesis are similar to Eder’s, as it

recognises food as a powerful cultural form, and this project developed from the belief that

we need to search beneath the surface of our practical engagement with nature to rediscover

the underlying cultural meanings that shape our practical interaction. The social category

and cultural meanings of food are central to this thesis, however the present thesis

maintains that the natural and biological dimensions of food, and its implications for both

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the ‘natural’ and ‘social’ world are also important (Dowler et al. 2009, p.204). Kate Soper

emphasises the importance of the natural in her critical realist perspective of nature:

For there is one sense in which nature does always have a say in human activities

…This is the ‘nature’ to whose laws we are always subject, even as we harness

them to human purposes, and whose processes we can neither escape nor destroy.

This is the ‘nature’ that cannot be said to be ‘ending’ whatever we do to the planet

Earth (Soper 2009, p.226).

As sociologists studying nature it is necessary to acknowledge that the physical properties

of nature limit what we are able to do, but we still have choices to make about what we

believe is beneficial within these restrictions (Soper 2009, p.226). Eder argues that ‘if we

wish to make possible the learning processes that can overcome the destructive relationship

to nature, we must again become aware of the symbolic foundations of that relationship’

(1996 [1988], p.viii).

However as the eating of food is a biological requirement for human life, an environmental

sociology of food must go beyond the dominant idea that sociology can only examine the

social and the cultural in contrast to the natural (Carter & Charles 2009, p.18). In this way

food must be simultaneously conceptualised and understood as symbolic and physical, a

subject and an object, both natural and cultural, such that ‘food’ can be a bridge between

nature and society. Murcott confirms this idea when she explains ‘eating marks the

characteristic way people are simultaneously biological and social; at once animal, but not

like other animals. Human beings belong to the worlds of both nature and culture…[it] has

both material and symbolic significance’ (Murcott 1982, p.204). Furthermore food has

practical merit because unlike other broad and distanced environmental issues, the

consumption of food is something that all humans engage in everyday, and this daily

interaction makes environmental problems more relevant and accessible. For this reason

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this thesis agrees with Macnaghten and Urry’s notion, to recall the literature review, that

sociologists should focus on ‘embedded social practices’ (1998, p.2). However this thesis

argues, like Eder, that our daily physical interaction with food is the ‘most elementary and

simultaneously the most ‘social’ level of interaction with nature’ (Eder 1996 [1988], p.viii),

thus we must examine the social category and cultural meanings of food.

Civilisation and Kultur

The present thesis argues that underlying Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s understandings of nature

and culture are notions of civilised and uncivilised. However their respective

interpretations are distinct, and so this thesis will now consider their perspectives with

reference to Norbert Elias’s (2000 [1939]) discussion on the difference between ‘culture’

and ‘civilisation’ in French and German contexts1. Elias investigated how people from

Western society have not always conducted themselves in our present understanding of

‘civilised’ (Elias 2000 [1939], p.viiii). He explains that concepts of ‘civilisation’ denote an

array of facts including, technology, manners, scientific knowledge, religious ideas and

customs, and even ‘the way in which food is prepared’ (Elias 2000 [1939], p.5). However

Elias noticed that ‘civilisation’ means different things to various Western nations, in

particular, he identified a great difference between the French and German uses of the term.

Elias describes this difference as a ‘peculiar phenomenon’ because although the concepts

civilisation (French) and Kultur (German) are straightforward in their respective contexts,

he explains:

The way in which a piece of the world is bound up in them, the manner in

which they include certain areas and exclude others as a matter of course,

the hidden evaluations which they implicitly bring with them, all this makes

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them difficult to define for any outsider (Elias 2000 [1939], p.6).

In essence the French concept of civilisation refers to the political or economic, technical or

religious, moral or social facts (Elias 2000 [1939], p.6). Civilisation downplays the

difference between people and accentuates the commonalities of all human beings, or as

Elias indicates, the commonalities ‘in the view of the bearers’ (2000 [1939], p.6).

Furthermore a central notion of civilisation is that it operates towards constant expansion

and colonisation. The German concept of Kultur, in contrast, denotes intellectual, artistic,

and religious facts, but is inclined to isolate these facts from political, economic, and social

facts (Elias 2000 [1939], p.6). A significant feature of Kultur is that it does not seek to

expand and colonise people, rather the ‘concept of Kultur delimits’ and emphasises national

diversity and the separate identity of groups.

Elias notes that the national self-images represented by the terms civilisation and Kultur

‘take very different forms. But however different the self-image...they all regard it as

completely self-evident that theirs is the way in which the world of humans in general

wants to be viewed and judged’ (Elias 2000 [1939], p.7). Elias shows that however

reasonable and rational civilisation and Kultur may seem in their respective French and

German context, they have developed from a set of historical situations and different social

conditions of intellectual life in both countries (Goudsblom & Mennell 1998, p.47). In

France the concept of civilisation arose because the bourgeois intellectuals were included in

court society, which brought greater political activity than in other nations (Elias 2000

[1939], p.32). In Germany the social walls between middle class and aristocracy were

much stricter, and so aspiring middle class intellectuals remained politically

disenfranchised, but developed their own culture and expression (Elias 2000 [1939], p.32).

96

The present thesis will now argue that underlying Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s understandings

of the nature/culture divide are notions of civilised and uncivilised that can be situated

within their respective French and German contexts. In Lévi-Strauss’s RC and CT he

proposed that cooking is a medium that reveals the unconscious binary of nature/culture in

the human mind. It is evident that this idea stems from the French notion of civilisation,

which sought to accentuate the commonalities of all human beings, or to recall Elias’s

perspective, the commonalities ‘in view of the bearers’ (2000 [1939], p.6). In a similar

vein, Lévi-Strauss’s trans-historical concept that ‘nature progresses to culture’ (1966a,

p.587) can be situated into the broader understanding of civilisation in the French context,

because the French believed that civilisation was a process that needs to be applied to all

societies, but is not yet finished (Elias 2000 [1939], p.40). In Germany the middle class

intellectuals were politically impotent, but intellectually radical and were critical of the

notion of civilisation because they believed it resulted from capitalism (Elias 2000 [1939]).

In this way Eder’s understanding that human’s have remained ‘culturally naïve

‘Philistines’’ in their interaction with nature’ (1996 [1988], p.viii) resulted from the

German perspective of ‘civilisation’ as opposed to their notion Kultur.

It is evident from this comparison that Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s diverse understandings of

the nature/culture divide were influenced by their respective concepts of ‘civilisation’ in

French and German contexts. This comparison indicates that our interaction with food

becomes a metaphor of the civilised and uncivilised. This thesis set out to problematise the

nature/culture divide in modern society with the social category and cultural meanings of

food as a central lens. However it discovered through the hermeneutical reconstruction of

Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s selected works that underlying the nature/culture divide is a

discourse about civilisation. The present thesis argues that food is a privileged way of

97

examining the nature/culture divide in modern society, because food is simultaneously

natural and cultural, and it intersects the broader industrial sphere and our everyday lives.

This thesis proposes that a future environmental sociology of food needs to examine ‘food’

as an ‘elementary form’ because it is ‘an essential and permanent aspect of humanity’

(Durkheim 1995 [1912], p.13). As Hogan (et al.) explain ‘Nature is the condition of our

material existence, culture is our only means of encountering and re-forming nature’ (2010,

p.337). For this reason an environmental sociology of food must take into account the

underlying constitutions of meanings concerning food that inform our changing social

practices at a core level.

It is clear that the hermeneutical reconstruction of Lévi-Strauss and Eder’s texts have

provided insight to show how the social category and cultural meanings of food are helpful

to problematise the nature/culture divide in modern society. This was the first step of a

larger research programme towards the development of a theoretical framework that will be

more adequate to the task of elaborating an environmental sociology of food. An

environmental sociology of food will go beyond the ‘add and stir’ approach, that is to say,

one where the meanings of ‘food’ hold a privileged place in problematising the

culture/nature divide across cultures, histories, and modernities. This project, as the

preliminary step in a long-term research agenda, has sought to establish the centrality of

food in rethinking the culture/nature divide. However the current thesis does not seek to

overcome the nature/culture divide per se, rather it argues that the social category of food

problematises this divide in a new way, and through this renewed problematisation, new

insights into the human condition in modernity (and beyond) can emerge. In this approach

the nature/culture divide becomes less of a dichotomy and more of an interplay that can

98

engage in both social constructionist and critical realist perspectives, with consequences for

both theory and practice in modern society.

The global production and consumption of food is a major factor in environmental

problems (Ericksen 2008; Dowler et al. 2009; Garnett 2008; Leahy 2008; Pretty et al.

2005). It is important for sociologists, policymakers, and the broader public to think

critically about the taken-for-granted cultural meanings and assumptions about food, and to

examine how they influence our daily food practices, which may lead to richer

understandings of the nature/culture divide in modern society. The development of an

environmental sociology of food is a necessary part of an overall response to ‘one of the

most urgent problems facing humankind’ (Carter & Charles 2009, p.18). As Zygmunt

Bauman writes, 'the world full of possibilities is like a buffet table set with mouth-watering

dishes' (2000, p.63), but this is no 'free lunch' (Bauman 1997, p.4).

1 Elias makes a distinction between the civilisation of French and British contexts and Kultur of Germany. However for the purposes of this thesis (i.e. Lévi-Strauss and Eder originate from France and Germany respectively), the present thesis will purely refer to the difference between French and German meanings of ‘civilisation’.

99

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