Culinary Anthropology??

[Elizabeth Ann]

An excelent book on "culinary anthroplogy" is Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture by Marvin Harris. I got my B.A. in anthropology and loved this book. Harris explains how human behavior (i.e. eating habbits) can be explained in materialistic terms. For example, most people do not eat inscets. This is because the energy expended to collect them is not worth the pay off in calories consumed. It is much more effecient, and more rewarding to eat larger animals. But, in cultures where there is little available meat or a protein shortage, the consumption of insects may be common.

[jaybee]

QUOTE (Fat Guy @ Jun 27 2002, 07:27 AM)

As for the hard sciences being political only on the funding end, that's just wrong. Indeed, one of the most alarming trends in the hard sciences is their increasing politicization and abandonment of the scientific method. Most scientists who devote their careers to studying, for example, the greenhouse effect find themselves in a politically charged atmosphere that would be entirely recognizable in the most politicized women's studies department.

That does not mean that their final conclusions are influenced by politics. Personal taste (including political taste) will partially determine an individual scientist’s beliefs only when the evidence is ambiguous. With enough data, however, an apolitical consensus is reached.

I have had the geology departments of a leading university described to me, with emphasis on the differences between the scientists who study igneous rock and those who study sedimentary or metamorphic rock. The descriptions would have inspired Jonathon Swift, and the "academic" politics between them would have interested Von Clauswitz.

[Suzanne F]

Boston University now grants a Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. The program was founded by Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.

Link

[bushey]

Elizabeth Ann -- I love Marvin Harris. Read his book "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Almost had him for a professor one semester. If you think about it, culinary anthropology goes far beyond what we eat to the social implications and the division of labor involved in procuring and preparing food, down to the order in which people are allowed to eat food and where they can eat it. In many ways, food represents power.

[oraklet]

indeed food is associated with power - and guilt. that must be the reason for cretan (and later) bullfights or the assyrian kings' lion hunts. by standing face-to-face with the prey, it is given a fair chance of winning on behalf of all the other prey that is just slaughtered in unfair ways, and at the same time the human (if he wins...), representing us all, can say: "look, we are not such cowards after all, and we win any way."

though that is not the way we consciously think of it today, it is still with us in many forms (just think of the efforts to slaughter pigs, cows, chicken etc. in a "humane" way). and most of us, i think, have been through a phase of life (mostly in our tender youth) being aware of the horror of killing animals.

[mamster]

Is anyone else reading the new history Near a Thousand Tables by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto? The author is a curmudgeonly Oxford historian who wears his prejudices on his sleeve and is delightfully contrarian. At one point he compares vegans to cannibals, and he keeps interjecting comments about whether the food he's discussing is delicious or not. Mostly I find food history books (even highly recommended ones like the Flandrin) unbearably tedious, but I really enjoyed this one. Give it a try.