Anthropology of food
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Given the social importance of food, it might seem strange to discover that the Trobrianders eat alone, retiring to their own hearths with their portions, turning their backs on one another and eating rapidly for fear of being observed." --Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating (1980), p. 8-9, Peter Farb, George J. Armelagos |
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Anthropology of food is a sub-discipline of anthropology that connects an ethnographic and historical perspective with contemporary social issues in food production and consumption systems.
Although early anthropological accounts often dealt with cooking and eating as part of ritual or daily life, food was rarely regarded as the central point of academic focus. This changed in the later half of the 20th century, when foundational work by Mary Douglas, Marvin Harris, Arjun Appadurai, Jack Goody, and Sidney Mintz cemented the study of food as a key insight into modern social life. Mintz is known as the "Father of food anthropology" for his work Sweetness and Power (1985), which linked British demand for sugar with the creation of empire and exploitative industrial labor conditions.
Research has traced the material and symbolic importance of food, as well as how they intersect. Examples of ongoing themes are food as a form of differentiation, commensality, and food's role in industrialization and globalizing labor and commodity chains.
Several related and interdisciplinary academic programs exist in the US and UK (listed under Food studies institutions).
See also
