Food and culture a reader free download

Created from uoregon on Holiday cheer inevitably means a great abundance of food and drink—delicious, tempting and for most of us a hazard. The pressure to enjoy all these varied good things is very great.

Feasting at festivals and eating meagerly in the long intervals between great events is a way of handling food that is very widespread among the peoples of the world who seldom have more than just enough to live on. It is one way of coping with perennial scarcity that allows everyone to share occasionally a very limited supply of foods that are really good. But this is no longer our way. For the majority of Americans food is omnipresent. Supermarkets, hot-dog stands, candy counters, snack bars, soft-drink machines and a constant stream of highly colored advertisements continually keep the possibility of eating before us.

But holidays are only a high point. We have contrived to construct a world in which food in great variety is present everywhere at all times of the year. So the problem for great numbers of Americans is not how to get enough food or how to be well nourished. Instead it is how to fend off the insistent pressure to eat. It is the responsibility of parents to make the best of each child; but we believe that adults, as individuals, have control over their own bodies and should demonstrate through the care they exercise both how they see themselves and how they wish to be seen in their relations to others.

There are handicaps, clearly, that cannot be overcome. But everyone can try. To make the most of oneself, we say, is good. To give up is wrong. Today this moral attitude places a very heavy burden on one group—a very mixed group—in our society.

This is the group of all those who, for whatever reason, are obese. No fashions are designed for them. No furniture is built for them. Potentially or actually, they are outcasts.

We believe it is wrong to be obese. It shows a lack of character, a disregard for health and a blatant lack of self-discipline. In the light of this belief, all kinds of obesity are lumped together. We treat as similar in kind the overweight of glandular imbal- ance, weight put on during pregnancy, weight that comes to the lonely girl who eats comforting chocolates that make her fatter and even less likely to get a date and weight that is a response to feelings of unworthiness.

Detailed studies have shown that there are many and very different origins of overweight. But to the average person who is deciding whether to accept a student or whether to hire someone for a job or to promote someone to a higher position, who is anx- iously watching the girls a son is dating or less often the boys a daughter is dating, obesity is just obesity—unattractive, unacceptable and reprehensible.

But are the obese really sinners? Why today do we still have these puritanical attitudes about eating?

Is it necessary to invoke guilt to control our enjoyment of plenty? The Weight Watchers movement, which has swept the country in the past eight years, gains its greatest strength from the belief that those who try and succeed are good and will be rewarded. Like Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups that use like mind- edness as a kind of external conscience to bolster up the will to reform and improve oneself, Weight Watchers expresses a peculiarly American idea.

Why Do We Overeat? Confessing their familiar sins to each other, as is done in all such mutual-support groups, helps them to face them- selves and so to take each necessary step in the arduous and painful process of dieting to lose 50, or even pounds of cumbersome, misery-making weight. But there is a reward. But the various ways we have devised to deal with overweight do not come to grips with the fundamen- tal question: Why do we have this constant struggle with food?

Is there no other way? They may well point out some of the injustices suffered by the overweight. But this is likely at best to strengthen the resolve of those who diet to escape the penalties of being fat.

Our peculiar attitudes toward food in this country become even clearer when one looks at another group—the rebellious young. Just as they have rejected so much else that they regard as part of the corrupt adult world, they have rejected the food habits they were taught.

Many are extreme food faddists. Often they are painfully thin, and in many cases seriously malnourished. We do not condemn them for being thin; most people would like to be thin. But their situation is serious, for their health may be permanently impaired. Even more serious may be the impairment to the health of their children. Both the obese and the rebellious young are victims—victims of our obsolete atti- tude toward food and eating. The obese, whom we treat as sinners, are scapegoats for all of us, made to suffer as examples of what many of us fear we might become—if we let ourselves go.

They feel left out. The youthful rebels, in contrast, reject our accepted eating habits as part of their search for a new life-style. But so are we all victims. The real problem is one all of us must face. In the past, when the quantity and variety of foods were much more limited, meals could be extremely monotonous.

Then mothers urged and begged and forced. There was no alternative. We still plan our three meals a day in the same way, treating them as if they consti- tuted all the food available to us.

We punish the obese. But we all have become the victims of this outmoded style. Recognizing this, we can help our children to eat in a new style. First I think we can give up using food as a punishment and a reward—as a symbol of a duty performed or neglected , a consolation or an accolade.

Where food is so plentiful, food can be food and the focus of our feeling can be directed toward the pleasure of sharing a meal with others.

We would do better to take into account the variations in individual rhythms in the need for food as well as the different rhythms in the working day for different people. In the past children were taught to eat. If they were thin, they should eat more; if they stuffed, they were deprived of good things. But in the last generation, those chil- dren who were brought up with a genuine sense of self-demand within the bounds of sensible nutrition are the ones who, as adults, have kept a relaxed sense of what their physical need for food is and what they can enjoy.

This capacity to follow their indi- vidual rhythms in eating would really give people a sense of personal—instead of arbitrarily determined—control over their own bodies. Finally, the whole world today is linked through food, the food that some have in superabundance and others urgently need.

By freeing our children from the strictures of conscience about their personal consumption of food, they would be freer to think of shared food as a source of well-being for everyone everywhere. The inhabitants of the United States consume almost twice as much sugar as the French. But this is by no means all. For the Americans must do something with all that sugar.

But is this relation really invariable today? And if so, why? Nor is this all. For who would claim that in France wine is only wine? Sugar or wine, these two superabundant substances are also institutions. And these institutions nec- essarily imply a set of images, dreams, tastes, choices, and values. I remember an American hit song: Sugar Time. Sugar is a time, a category of the world.

But at least the sociologists, the historians of the present—since we are talking only about contemporary eating habits here— and the economists are already aware that there is such a thing.

Thus P. Chombart de Lauve has made an excellent study of the behavior of French working-class families with respect to food. Perrot came to the conclusion that economic factors played a less important role in the changes that have taken place in middle-class food habits in the last hundred years than changing tastes; and this really means ideas, especially about nutrition. This is notably the case with most cooking oils.

All of this, we might say, points to the necessary widening of the very notion of food. For what is food? It is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies.

It is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a pro- tocol of usages, situations, and behavior. Information about food must be gathered wherever it can be found: by direct observation in the economy, in techniques, usages, and advertising; and by indirect observation in the mental life of a given society.

I should like to give a brief outline of what such an analysis might be. That is to say that it is not just an indicator of a set of more or less conscious motivations, but that it is real sign, perhaps the functional unit of a system of communication.

By this I mean not only the elements of display in food, such as foods involved in rites of hospitality,9 for all food serves as a sign among the members of a given society. This is true for clothing;10 it is also true for food.

Contemporary Food Consumption For the fact that there is communication is proven, not by the more or less vague consciousness that its users may have of it, but by the ease with which all the facts concerning food form a structure analogous to other systems of communication. If food is a system, what might be its constituent units? It must be added that the units of our system would probably coincide only rarely with the products in current use in the economy.

In other words, these signifying units are more subtle than the commercial units and, above all, they have to do with subdivi- sions with which production is not concerned, so that the sense of the sub-division can differentiate a single product.

If the units of our system of food are not the products of our economy, can we at least have some preliminary idea of what they might be? In the absence of a systematic inventory, we may risk a few hypotheses. A study by P. Bachelard applied to language. As for what is considered tasty, C. I should like to suggest here two very different examples. And here is another example, modern this time. In the United States, the Americans seem to oppose the category of sweet and we have already seen to how many different varieties of foods this applies with an equally general category that is not, however, that of salty—understandably so, since their food is salty and sweet to begin with—but that of crisp or crispy.

Crisp designates everything that crunches, crackles, grates, sparkles, from potato chips to certain brands of beer; crisp—and this shows that the unit of food can overthrow logical categories—crisp may be applied to a product just because it is ice cold, to another because it is sour, to a third because it is brittle. Quite obviously, such a notion goes beyond the purely physical nature of the product; crispness in a food designates an almost magical quality, a certain briskness and sharpness, as opposed to the soft, soothing character of sweet foods.

Now then, how will we use the units established in this manner? For what society does with them is precisely to structure them in order to make use of them. As I have already pointed out, they refer not only to display,16 but to a much larger set of themes and situations. Today we have a tool with which to isolate these themes and situations, namely, advertising. Furthermore, studies of motivation are now so advanced that it is possible to analyze cases in which the response of the public is negative.

I already mentioned the feelings of guilt fos- tered by an advertising for sugar which emphasized pure enjoyment. It was bad adver- tising, but the response of the public was nonetheless psychologically most interesting. A rapid glance at food advertising permits us rather easily, I think, to identify three groups of themes. In this case, this historical quality is obviously linked to food techniques preparation and cooking. These have long roots, reaching back to the depth of the French past. They are, we are told, the repository of a whole experience, of the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors.

French food is never sup- posed to be innovative, except when it rediscovers long-forgotten secrets. Motivation studies have shown that feelings of inferior- ity were attached to certain foods and that people therefore abstained from them. In a certain sense, advertising eroticizes food and thereby transforms our consciousness of it, bringing it into a new sphere of situations by means of a pseudocausal relationship.

Finally, a third area of consciousness is constituted by a whole set of ambiguous values of a somatic as well as psychic nature, clustering around the concept of health. In a mythical way, health is indeed a simple relay midway between the body and the mind; it is the alibi food gives to itself in order to signify materially a pattern of imma- terial realities.

Conditioning originates with the body but goes beyond it. This situ- ation may be one of conquest alertness, aggressiveness or a response to the stress of modern life relaxation. In the developed countries, food is henceforth thought out, not by specialists, but by the entire public, even if this thinking is done within a framework of highly mythical notions.

Modern nutri- tional science at least according to what can be observed in France is not bound to any moral values, such as asceticism, wisdom, or purity,20 but on the contrary, to values of power. The energy furnished by a consciously worked out diet is mythically directed, it seems, toward an adaptation of man to the modern world. To eat is a behavior that develops beyond its own ends, replacing, sum- ming up, and signalizing other behaviors, and it is precisely for these reasons that it is a sign.

What are these other behaviors? Today, we might say all of them: activity, work, sports, effort, leisure, celebration—every one of these situations is expressed through food.

But today, work also has its own kind of food on the level of a sign, that is : energy-giving and light food is experienced as the very sign of, rather than only a help toward, participation in modern life.

The snack bar not only responds to a new need, it also gives a certain dramatic expression to this need and shows those who frequent it to be modern men, managers who exercise power and control over the extreme rapidity of modern life.

On the level of institutions, there is also the business lunch, a very different kind of thing, which has become commercialized in the form of special menus: here, on the contrary, the emphasis is placed on comfort and long discussions; there even remains a trace of the mythical conciliatory power of con- viviality.

Hence, the business lunch emphasizes the gastronomic, and under certain cir- cumstances traditional, value of the dishes served and uses this value to stimulate the euphoria needed to facilitate the transaction of business.

Snack bar and business lunch are two very closely related work situations, yet the food connected with them signalizes their differences in a perfectly readable manner. We can imagine many others that should be catalogued. This much can be said already: today, at least in France, we are witnessing an extra- ordinary expansion of the areas associated with food: food is becoming incorporated.

This adaptation is usually made in the name of hygiene and better living, but in reality, to stress this fact once more, food is also charged with signifying the situation in which it is used. In other words, we might say that in contemporary French society food has a constant tendency to transform itself into situation. There is no better illustration for this trend than the advertising mythology about coffee.

What is the reason for this shift? It is that coffee is felt to be not so much a substance22 as a circumstance. It is the recognized occasion for interrupting work and using this respite in a precise pro- tocol of taking sustenance. Food, in short, will lose in substance and gain in function; this function will be general and point to activity such as the business lunch or to times of rest such as coffee ; but since there is a very marked opposition between work and relaxation, the traditionally festive function of food is apt to disappear gradually, and society will arrange the signifying system of its food around two major focal points: on the one hand, activity and no longer work , and on the other hand, leisure no longer celebration.

Reprinted by permission of Annales. Annual sugar consumption in the United States is 43 kg. Motivation studies have shown that food advertisements openly based on enjoyment are apt to fail, since they make the reader feel guilty J.

Marguerite Perrot, Le mode de vie des familles bourgeoises, — Paris: Colin, On the latest techniques of investigation, see again J. Yet on this point alone, there are many known facts that should be assembled and systematized: cocktail parties, formal dinners, degrees and kinds of display by way of food according to the different social groups.

Hjelnislev, Essais linguistiques [Copenhagen, ], p. Jeanmaire, Dionysos Paris: Payot , p. The idea of social display must not be associated purely and simply with vanity; the analysis of motivation, when conducted by indirect questioning, reveals that worry about appearances is part of an extremely subtle reaction and that social strictures are very strong, even with respect to food.

The exotic nature of food can, of course, be a value, but in the French public at large, it seems limited to coffee tropical and pasta Italian. Obviously, there is no psychic quality inherent in the thing itself. We need only to compare the development of vegetarianism in England and France. It seems that this stimulating, re-energizing power is now assigned to sugar, at least in France.

Richard Nice. Thus, within the dominant class, one can, for the sake of simplicity, distinguish three structures of the consumption distributed under three items: food, culture and presentation clothing, beauty care, toiletries, domestic servants.

These structures take strictly opposite forms—like the structures of their capital—among the teachers as against the indus- trial and commercial employers see Table 3.

Whereas the latter have exceptionally high expenditure on food 37 percent of the budget , low cultural costs and medium spending on presentation and representation, the former, whose total spending is lower on average, have low expenditure on food relatively less than manual workers , limited expenditure on presentation though their expenditure on health is one of the highest and relatively high expenditure on culture books, papers, entertainments, sport, toys, music, radio and record-player.

Opposed to both these groups are the members of the professions, who devote the same proportion of their budget to food as the teachers The system of differences becomes clearer when one looks more closely at the pat- terns of spending on food.

In this respect the industrial and commercial employers differ markedly from the professionals, and a fortiori from the teachers, by virtue of the importance they give to cereal-based products especially cakes and pastries , wine, meat preserves foie gras, etc. The teachers, whose food purchases are almost. Table 3. Fooda 9, Source: C. Ill The members of the professions are mainly distinguished by the high pro- portion of their spending which goes on expensive products, particularly meat The opposition between the two extremes is established here between the poor and the rich nouveau riche , between la bouffe and la grande bouffe 2 the food consumed is increasingly rich both in cost and in calories and increasingly heavy game, foie gras.

The disappearance of economic constraints is accompanied by a strengthening of the social censorships which forbid coarseness and fatness, in favour of slimness and distinction. Finally, the teachers, richer in cultural capital than in economic capital, and therefore inclined to ascetic consumption in all areas, pursue originality at the lowest economic cost and go in for exoticism Italian, Chinese cooking etc. Eating habits, especially when represented solely by the produce consumed, cannot of course be considered independently of the whole life-style.

The most obvious reason for this is that the taste for particular dishes of which the statistical. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Thus there is a particularly strong opposition in this respect between the working classes and the dominated fractions of the domi- nant class, in which the women, whose labour has a high market value and who, perhaps as a result, have a higher sense of their own value tend to devote their spare time rather to child care and the transmission of cultural capital, and to contest the traditional division of domestic labour.

It is no accident that this form of cooking symbolizes one state of female existence and of the sexual. Tastes in food also depend on the idea each class has of the body and of the effects of food on the body, that is, on its strength, health and beauty; and on the categories it uses to evaluate these effects, some of which may be important for one class and ignored by another, and which the different classes may rank in very different ways.

Thus, whereas the working classes are more attentive to the strength of the male body than its shape, and tend to go for products that are both cheap and nutritious, the professions prefer products that are tasty, health-giving, light and not fattening. Taste, a class culture turned into nature, that is, embodied, helps to shape the class body. It follows that the body is the most indisputable materialization of class taste, which it manifests in several ways.

It is in fact through preferences with regard to food which may be perpetuated beyond their social conditions of production as, in other areas, an accent, a walk etc. At a deeper level, the whole body schema, in particular the physical approach to the act of eating, governs the selection of certain foods. It would be easy to show, for example, that Kleenex tissues, which have to be used deli- cately, with a little sniff from the tip of the nose, are to the big cotton handkerchief,.

And the practical philosophy of the male body as a sort of power, big and strong, with enormous, imperative, brutal needs, which is asserted in every male posture, especially when eating, is also the principle of the division of foods between the sexes, a division which both sexes recognize in their practices and their language. It behooves a man to drink and eat more, and to eat and drink stronger things. Strictly biological differences are underlined and symbolically accentuated by dif- ferences in bearing, differences in gesture, posture and behaviour which express a whole relationship to the social world.

The sign-bearing, sign-wearing body is also a producer of signs which are physically marked by the relationship to the body: thus the valorization of virility, expressed in a use of the mouth or a pitch of the voice, can determine the whole of working-class pronunciation. The signs constituting the perceived body, cultural products which differentiate groups by their degree of culture, that is, their distance from nature, seem grounded in nature.

The legitimate use of the body is spontaneously perceived as an index of moral. The prevailing taxonomies tend to rank and contrast the properties most frequent among the dominant i. Plain speaking, plain eating: the working-class meal is characterized by plenty which does not exclude restrictions and limits and above all by freedom. On Sundays, while the women are on their feet, busily serving, clearing the table, washing up, the men remain seated, still eating and drinking.

These strongly marked differences of social status associated with sex and age are accompanied by no prac- tical differentiation such as the bourgeois division between the dining room and the kitchen, where the servants eat and sometimes the children , and strict sequencing of the meal tends to be ignored. This freedom, which may be perceived as disorder or slovenliness, is adapted to its function.

Firstly, it is labour-saving, which is seen as an advantage. Thus, when the coffee is served, a single spoon may be passed around to stir it.

But these short cuts are only permissible because one is and feels at home, among the family, where ceremony would be an affectation. Similarly, the plates are not changed between dishes. The soup plate, wiped with bread, can be used right through the meal.

In opposition to the free-and-easy working-class meal, the bourgeoisie is concerned to eat with all due form. It is the expression of a habitus of order, restraint and propriety which may not be abdicated. The relation to food—the primary need and pleasure—is only one dimension of the bourgeois rela- tion to the social world.

And it could be shown that two antagonistic world views, two worlds, two representations of human excellence are contained in this matrix. On these morali- ties, these world views, there is no neutral viewpoint; what for some is shameless and slovenly, for others is straightforward, unpretentious; familiarity is for some the most absolute form of recognition, the abdication of all distance, a trusting openness, a relation of equal to equal; for others, who shun familiarity, it is an unseemly liberty.

The preference for foreign restaurants—Italian, Chinese, Japanese and, to a lesser extent, Russian—rises with level in the social hierarchy. The only exceptions are Spanish restaurants, which are associated with a more popular form of tourism, and North African restaurants, which are most favoured by junior executives.

Les gross: the rich; grosse bouffe: bulk food cf. See also note 2 above translator. That is why the body designates not only present position but also trajectory. Formality is a way of denying the truth of the social world and of social relations.

The two concepts are moreover not really distinct, since, according to linguists, for every language the fundamental opposition is that between consonant and vowel. The subsequent distinctions among vowels and among consonants result from the appli- cation to these derived areas of such contrasts as compact and diffuse, open and closed, acute and grave. The Culinary Triangle It is clear that in respect to cooking the raw constitutes the unmarked pole, while the other two poles are strongly marked, but in different directions: indeed, the cooked is a cultural transformation of the raw, whereas the rotted is a natural transformation.

And we know from some incidents that followed the Allied landings in that American soldiers conceived the category of the rotted in more extended fashion than we, since the odor given off by Norman cheese dairies seemed to them the smell of corpses, and occasionally prompted them to destroy the dairies. In any cuisine, nothing is simply cooked, but must be cooked in one fashion or another.

Nor is there any condition of pure rawness: only certain foods can really be eaten raw, and then only if they have been selected, washed, pared or cut, or even seasoned. Let us now consider, for those cuisines whose categories are relatively well-known, the different modes of cooking. There are certainly two principal modes, attested in innumerable societies by myths and rites which emphasize their contrast: the roasted and the boiled. In what does their difference consist? The use of a pot and the consumption of boiled tubers are looked upon with pride.

It remains to. Similarly, the Pocon- achi of Mexico interpret the roasted as a compromise between the raw and the burned. This explanation accounts for the various colors of corn and beans. In British Guiana, the Waiwai sorcerer must respect two taboos, one directed at roast meat, the other red paint, and this again puts the roasted on the side of blood and the raw.

In the Dakota language, the same stem connotes putrefaction and the fact of boiling pieces of meat together with some additive. These distinctions are far from exhausting the richness and complexity of the contrast between roasted and boiled.

The boiled is cooked within a receptacle, while the roasted is cooked from without: the former thus evokes the concave, the latter the convex. The same opposition is found, differently formulated, in exotic societies.

The extremely primitive Guayaki of Paraguay roast all their game, except when they pre- pare the meat destined for the rites which determine the name of a new child: this meat must be boiled. The Caingang of Brazil prohibit boiled meat for the widow and wid- ower, and also for anyone who has murdered an enemy. In all these cases, prescription of the boiled accompanies a tightening, prescription of the roasted a loosening of familial or social ties.

It would be interesting to carry out statistical research on this point. From this comes a subsidiary association of the roasted with men, the boiled with women. Or else the relation is reversed: the Assiniboin, on the northern plains of North America, reserve the preparation of boiled food for men engaged in a war expedition, while the women in the villages never use receptacles, and only roast their meat.

For example, boiling conserves entirely the meat and its juices, whereas roasting is accompanied by destruction and loss.

One connotes economy, the other prodigality; the former is plebeian, the latter aristocratic. This aspect takes on primary importance in societies which prescribe differences of status among indi- viduals or groups. In the ancient Maori, says Prytz-Johansen, a noble could himself roast his food, but he avoided all contact with the steaming oven, which was left to the slaves and women of low birth.

Thus, when pots and pans were introduced by the whites, they seemed infected utensils; a striking inversion of the attitude which we remarked in the New Caledonians.

These differences in appraisal of the boiled and the roasted, dependent on the dem- ocratic or aristocratic perspective of the group, can also be found in the Western tra- dition. One could interpret in the same manner dis- tinctions made—respectively by the Greeks, and the Romans and the Hebrews—on the basis of attitudes toward roasted and boiled, distinctions which have been noted by M. Other societies make use of the same opposition in a completely different direction. Because boiling takes place without loss of substance, and within a complete.

The boiled is life, the roasted death. Does not world folklore offer innumerable examples of the cauldron of immortality? But there has never been a spit of immortality. A Cree Indian rite admirably expresses this char- acter of cosmic totality ascribed to boiled food.

Within the basic culinary triangle formed by the categories of raw, cooked and rotted, we have, then, inscribed two terms which are situated: one, the roasted, in the vicinity of the raw; the other, the boiled, near the rotted.

This form seems to us to be smoking, which like roasting implies an unmediated operation without receptacle and without water but differs from roasting in that it is, like boiling, a slow form of cooking, both uniform and penetrating in depth.

Let us try to determine the place of this new term in our system of opposition. A third differential is created by the absence of a utensil in the case of roasting any stick doing the work of a spit , since the buccan is a constructed framework, that is, a cultural object. In this last respect, smoking is related to boiling, which also requires a cultural means, the receptacle. Pots and pans are carefully cared for and preserved utensils, which one cleans and puts away after use in order to make them serve their purpose as many times as possible; but the buccan must be destroyed immediately after use, otherwise the animal will avenge itself, and come in turn to smoke the huntsman.

On the other hand, as we have already indicated, it is clear that the boiled is opposed both to the smoked and the roasted in respect to the presence or absence of water.

But let us come back for a moment to the opposition between a perishable and a durable utensil which we found in Guiana in connection with smoking and boiling. Is it not contradictory that a cultural method should lead to a natural result? The same type of paradox is implied by the problematics of smoking as formulated by the natives of Guiana. And yet, on the other hand, its cultural means, the buccan, is to be immedi- ately destroyed.

What is the profound sense of this parallelism? In so-called primitive societies, cooking by water and smoking have this in common: one as to its means, the other as to its results, is marked by duration. As for smoking, it gives food that resists spoiling incomparably longer than that cooked by any other method.

Everything transpires as if the lasting possession of a cultural acquisition entailed, sometimes in the ritual realm, sometimes in the mythic, a concession made in return to nature: when the result is durable, the means must be precarious, and vice-versa. This ambiguity, which marks similarly, but in different directions, both the smoked and the boiled, is that same ambiguity which we already know to be inherent to the roasted.

Burned on one side and raw on the other, or grilled outside, raw within, the roasted incarnates the ambiguity of the raw and the cooked, of nature and culture,. But what forces them into this pattern is not purely a reason of form: hence the system demonstrates that the art of cooking is not located entirely on the side of culture.

It partakes of both domains, and projects this duality on each of its manifestations. But it cannot always do so in the same manner. The ambiguity of the roasted is intrinsic, that of the smoked and the boiled extrinsic, since it does not derive from things themselves, but from the way one speaks about them or behaves toward them.

Consequently, even when the structure is added to or transformed to overcome a disequilibrium, it is only at the price of a new disequilibrium which manifests itself in another domain. To this ineluc- table dissymmetry the structure owes its ability to engender myth, which is nothing other than an effort to correct or hide its inherent dissymmetry. To conclude, let us return to our culinary triangle. Within it we traced another triangle representing recipes, at least the most elementary ones: roasting, boiling and smoking.

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:.

The operational value of our diagram would be very restricted did it not lend itself to all the transformations necessary to admit other categories of cooking. We may proceed in similar fashion if the culinary system in question makes a distinction between cooking with water and.

A more complex transformation will be necessary to introduce the category of the fried. A tetrahedron will replace the recipe triangle, making it possible to raise a third axis, that of oil, in addition to those of air and water. The grilled will remain at the apex, but in the middle of the edge joining smoked and fried one can place roasted- in-the-oven with the addition of fat , which is opposed to roasted-on-the-spit with- out this addition.

Similarly, on the edge running from fried to boiled will be braising in a base of water and fat , opposed to steaming without fat, and at a distance from the water. Finally, sea- sonings will take their place in the system according to the combinations permitted or excluded with a given type of food. After elaborating our diagram so as to integrate all the characteristics of a given culinary system and no doubt there are other factors of a diachronic rather than a synchronic nature; those concerning the order, the presentation and the gestures of the meal , it will be necessary to seek the most economical manner of orienting it as a grille, so that it can be superposed on other contrasts of a sociological, economic, esthetic or religious nature: men and women, family and society, village and bush, economy and prodigality, nobility and commonality, sacred and profane, etc.

Translated from the French by Peter Brooks. Editions de Minuit, Paris It cannot occur except in view of a systematic ordering of ideas. Hence any piecemeal interpretation of the pollution rules of another culture is bound to fail. For the only way in which pollution ideas make sense is in reference to a total structure of thought whose key-stone, boundaries, margins and internal lines are held in relation by rituals of separation.

To illustrate this I take a hoary old puzzle from biblical scholarship, the abomina- tions of Leviticus, and particularly the dietary rules. Why should the camel, the hare and the rock badger be unclean? These exercises will be counted as part of the participation grade and cannot be taken at a later date or substituted for any other exercise or activity.

These exams will be short answer and short essay. They will cover material from lectures, discussions, student presentations, and readings. They are not cumulative. Study guides will be given 2 classes before each exam. These exams will take place on days C-8, C, and C Information about the field assignments is provided above.

Presentations of field are due on days C-9, C, and C Students in the class will form groups. Each group will be responsible for organizing a consciousness-raising activity for the SAS community. The event will be planned throughout the voyage and will take place at any time during our voyage on board.

Students will present the results of their consciousness- raising activity to the class on days C and C of our voyage. Students will have an opportunity to work together during class time on day C However, it is expected that students will meet outside class time additionally to prepare for this activity.

Haines and Claire A. The anthropology of food and eating By Paradee Plodpai. Kirleis u. Crow, a review of isonymy. Recent ad- which the children spend most of their time; vances in molecular genetics have increased sanitary facilities; topics discussed during interest in the concept of identity by de- the visit by CREN representatives and guid- scent. In particular, Morton discusses tial address, occupation, and income; rel- the issues of racial forensic identification evant anthropometric data; information on and Crow presents some new information family health; the obstetric history of the on gene diversity the coefficient of gene dif- mother; results of relevant physical exami- ferentiation.

This last paper suggests that mi- dence of diarrhea; and immunization and gration may be U-shaped, with lowest mi- personal hygiene. A list of selected refer- grations occurring in communities in the ences contains works in Portuguese, Span- middle range of sizes. The second group of papers consists of For those who might wish to duplicate the studies of population structure of particular Sao Paulo approach and methodology, it regions of the world.

In general, these stud- may be useful to emphasize the tripartite ies are based on isonymy, although other nature of the service: 1 direct contact of the methods are also occasionally employed. Zei Italy , T. Nettleship southwestern New York Hungary , F. Martuzzi Veronesi et al. Rudan et al. Slovenia , K. North and M. Fuster et al. These tive. By Carolyn F. Sargent and Caroline B. Generally speaking, with B. Kaplan and C. Mascie-Taylor, two one or two exceptions, all the articles are of papers concerning Italian migration pat- high quality and well written.

Lucchetti et al. This is a diverse regarding the need for mammograms and but interesting group of papers. Moreover, ied by anthropologists. Similarly, Hamil- bear on an ongoing problem in paleodemog- ton provides detailed examples of how and raphy, i. MacCormack gives a Overall, this volume is a fitting tribute to fine overview of gendered aspects of inter- Gabriel Lasker.

Most of the papers build on national health, even though her reference earlier work conducted by Dr. The point is chiefly Africa. What makes these central theme is isonymy or, more broadly, three articles especially commendable is the studies based on surnames.

The first two absence of ideological rhetoric; the data are sections of this volume present the theoret- allowed to speak for themselves. The ing those by Davis, Sherwin, Marshall, third section includes some hints of new di- Whiteford, and Jenkins. Davis presents an rections in anthropological demography. If I excellent overview of the available crosscul- have a criticism of this volume, it is the title. The data disclose that fertility pat- miscellaneous section.

Using her data from Newfoundland, choice. One ethical standard in the village. Whiteford gives a ject to political aims is encountered in other fine overview of the political economy ap- areas of the world and merits elaboration. She attempts, and par- scientific descriptions of the egg and sperm, tially succeeds, to tie together her theoreti- originally published in Signs, is a well- cal formulation with a case history. Focus- known classic. Using data from El Sal- Weeks et al.

They compare African-Americans and results in trauma that is acknowledged by Latinas superficially and the tenor is ideo- some women and denied by others. She calls logical. The tions and its metaphors by arguing that authors discuss the use of condoms within emotions aroused by political violence can- the context of racism, but fail to show the not be reduced, as some have attempted to specific ways racism is related to the use or do, to psychic stress, menopause, hyperten- non-use of condoms.

While the authors ar- sion or post-traumatic stress syndrome. They should also re- same situation. Women experience the vio- think the concept of risk and its Western lence by referring to el calor; how do men cultural assumptions. Each of these five ar- The Introduction by the editors summa- ticles follows well-established perspectives rizes well-established ideas for the uniniti- in medical anthropology and each is well ated audience.

While they rightly argue for thought-out and interesting. Davis-Floyd compares and con- tive to gender. I have two criticisms. Issues related to the differential ex- cultural relativism. The most interesting e.

For point is that fertility patterns are brought example, in Women in Pain, I ask why more about through the interaction between com- women than men experience more nonlife- munity dynamics and domestic needs.

In a threatening sickness, even though women Mexican rural community, the authors may live longer. What makes women sick. Women in pain. Philadelphia: Univer- ten overlaps with, but also is in opposition sity of Pennsylvania Press. Verbrugge L. Pathways of health and death.

Women, health and medicine in be held and explicated by the same indi- America: a historical perspective. New York: Garland. Rather, if one Knowledges: Culture Counterculture Subcul- compares a typical aborigine with a typical ture. By Peter Worsley. As a sumptions concerning the categories of telling point, however, for modern emphasis knowledge by reexamining the meaning of on cultural analysis and ethnic identity poli- culture.

This brand demonstrates the multiplicity and frag- of cultural hegemony has been used as the mented nature of knowledge in all societies. His key created and evolving conglomerates, neces- claim is that close analysis of other cultures sary mixtures of sub-cultures, counter- shows fragmented and contradictory cultures, and other cultures. It has been threads: religious and empirical, common their symbolic manipulation by elites, some- sense and elite-intellectual, social and indi- times to the point of ludicrous charade, vidual; knowledges that coexist in all soci- rather than any imperatives of history that eties.

Wors- last 30 years. In the past 20 years, several ley cites a wealth of detailed examples from edited volumes have appeared dealing with the world of taxonomy, astronomy, religion, various aspects of the field, but this volume medicine, nation-building, and the forging represents the first attempt at a general of tribal and ethnic identity to argue his synthesis by a single author.

It is a Hercu- case. Bioarchaeology will serve as nating, if eclectic account of cultural arca- the definitive work for years to come. But source. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 demonstration of the importance of histori- cover stress during growth and develop- cal trends among conflicting and reinforcing ment, exposure to infectious pathogens, and cultural moieties to the creation not discov- trauma, respectively.

Chap- class, ethnicity, religion, and science. This is ter 8 covers isotopic and elemental analysis, not, however, a book that falls strongly on Chapter 9 biodistance, and Chapter 10 vari- one side or the other of the current culture ous problems facing bioarchaeology, includ- wars between science and the humanities. Realizing that a finger of stupidity or incoherence at the wis- book such as this cannot please everyone, I dom of other cultures in their dealing with offer some of my own biases.

As promised in the fundamental problems of human life is the Introduction, the primary emphasis is to ignore the inconsistencies, failings, and on behavior reconstruction, much of which all too often ad hoc nature of our own.

Most readers should be pleased Center for History of Recent Science with this aspect of the book. It is heavily George Washington University referenced and provides detailed, up-to-date Washington, DC discussions of most of the topics with which professionals and students are concerned.

By Clark Spencer relationship between skeletal morphology Larsen. New York: Cambridge and behavior, models which may, in some University Press. Take, for ex- ample, the relationship between craniofa- The study of human skeletal remains is cial form and subsistence. Early 20th century notions of stand the relationship between nutrition stability of cranial form may have been and growth.