Culinary Anthropology??

[Wilfrid]

Nothing equivocal about it. When you say that "inderdisciplinary" is a code word for all that bad stuff, you generalize without qualification. I respond with two true statements: interdisciplinary means what it says, it's not a code word; you find the bad stuff in non-interdisciplinary courses.

If what you meant to say was that interdisciplinary courses tend to lend themselves to politicization and low standards, we could have discussed that. But you didn't say that.

There's no point protesting against evolution of the faculties. The purist impulse to recuperate food studies for anthropology (or media studies to literature) is no more than that - a purist impulse. The important question is whether good research and good teaching emerges, and I have no basis to contradict your assertion that, thus far, it hasn't. I was just trying to restrain the broad sweep of your brush.

[Jinmyo]

Wilfrid the Restrainer.

[Fat Guy]

The important question is whether good research and good teaching emerges, and I have no basis to contradict your assertion that, thus far, it hasn't.  I was just trying to restrain the broad sweep of your brush.

In other words, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, in order to be a pain in the ass? That's fine, but your defense of mediocrity -- that mediocrity exists everywhere -- is still equivocal.

[Wilfrid]

Pain in the ass? Not at all. One of the free services I provide here is to point out when statements are so broad and unqualified that they are almost certain to be false. A good sprinkling of words like "many", "some", "certain" and "a few" always give positions a greater chance of validity.

(Come on, you were just taking a trendy knee-jerk slap at academia, weren't you?)

[Fat Guy]

As you know, it's very important to me to appear as trendy as possible.

I thought the new software was supposed to have a button for "insert random qualifying adverb" but I guess Invision didn't get around to it.

[Wilfrid]

That would have been most desirable. I have been commending these useful terms to Plotnicki for some weeks now, with little success.

[SobaAddict70]

In other words, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, in order to be a pain in the ass?

I'm beginning to have visions of truth tables and Venn diagrams...

Ewww.

[spqr]

At a recent excavation at the site of the New Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Il, a deposit dating to the 1840s - 1850s revealed that the landowner and resident was importing French champaign and French olive oil. As the date of the assemblage is only a decade or two after Illinois was Indian country frontier, this find is very interesting from an historical/anthropological perspective. For those accustomed to think of olive oil and other Mediterranean products to be a fairly recent fad in American cuisine, archaeological research provides the data that shows what the reality is (was). If for nothing else, the archaeological and anthropological study of foodways is justified.

As it happens, I am current reading the reissue of Margaret Vissar's Much Depends on Dinner. If anyone seriously believes that multidisciplinary studies inevitably lead to poor scholarship I recommend they pic up a copy of this book.

Peace, y'all.

[Fat Guy]

And Visser is on staff at which university, in which food studies department? I've only flipped through the book, and it looked quite good, but I was under the impression that she's not an academic. Or that, if she does have academic training, it's not in food studies. If you have the book handy, what does the jacket say about her?

"Foodways" is another word on my hit list.

[Steve Klc]

Steve and spqr: Doctorate in Classics from the University of Toronto and at the time "The Rituals of Dinner" was published back in '91 the jacket said she was now teaching "Classics" at York University in Toronto.

Which seems to support Shaw's "academic but not in food studies" option.

[oraklet]

oh fat guy, beware of the big bad wilf. he will eat you if you enter his cave!

it is still as it was in c. p. snow's days: there are many things that divide humanities from natural(?) science, the most important being that the humanities deal with issues that can't help being political, one way or the other. therefore, the humanist can't help being influenced by his political standpoints; a priori, so to say. (whereas science is political only when it comes to the funding and application.) and interdisciplinarity in the humanities often seems dictated by a political agenda. i don't know if this is the case with interdisciplinary food related studies, as i've never read any...

i hope i've inserted enough qualifying adverbs.

[Fat Guy]

Politics may influence everything in the humanities (I'm not sure I agree, but let's take it as a fact for now), but that doesn't mean they influence everything (or everybody) equally. The problem I have with statements like "it's all political, so who cares?" is that they are a surrender of sorts. Sure, there are those in traditional Philosophy departments who let politics dictate all their conclusions. But one hopes that in the better departments there are long-established standards that help to rein in the most outlandish examples. A vain hope, perhaps, but one worth holding on to.

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.

But ultimately I'm willing to forgive politicization if useful output is occurring. That's where I have my major doubts about the field of food studies, and I'm still waiting for examples that demonstrate the worthiness of the endeavor.

[pariah_kerry]

A little off subject, but an interesting book (7 Plants That Changed The World). Topics are coffee, tea, sugar, quinine, cotton, potato...hmm. Maybe it was 6 Plants...I can't remember the author...

[John Whiting]

Steven writes:

Kurlansky's books are superb -- some of the best food books every written in my opinion. But, correct me if I'm wrong, he's not an academic. He's a journalist.

I agree. I love 'em. But a friend who is a genuine food historian tells me that although Kurlansky is a fine prose stylist and a good journalist, he doesn't know how to identify and verify sources with the accuracy of a trained scholar, and so his books are riddled with demonstrable errors. Don't ask me what they are; I don't know. But I'm inclined to take the word of my friend who is a generous person, likes the two books and has refrained from any public criticism because he admires him for what he has accomplished.

I can say, from my own knowledge, that Kurlansky's early New England history is centered on Gloucester at the expense of Cape Cod, New Bedford and the Islands. It's the sort of superficiality that a journalist is apt to be guilty of: with one eye on the clock, use what sources you have readily available and assume that they are sufficient.

And Steve, your rearguard action on the greenhouse effect is rapidly being overtaken by events. If you're not quick, you may end up in the same footnote to scientific history as the pundits who solemnly swore that smoking had nothing to do with lung cancer.

[Robert Schonfeld]

A little off subject, but an interesting book (7 Plants That Changed The World). Topics are coffee, tea, sugar, quinine, cotton, potato...hmm. Maybe it was 6 Plants...I can't remember the author...

What about wheat?

[oraklet]

well, f.g., i think we actually do agree on most of this. what i mean is, you can study greenhouse effects without being personally involved (and that is what i meant by using the word "political"). this is hardly possible when it comes to most of the humanities.

and i must admit that slowly, slowly i'm being convinced of the greenhouse effect - in spite of the politics involved.

[Steve Klc]

Then again, John, those might be the same folks who thought birth control pills had any link to breast cancer.

Admittedly, it would be more helpful to hear from genuine food historians about how to identify and verify sources with the accuracy of a trained scholar, and discuss books riddled with demonstrable errors out in the open--know any who care enough? (But it would probably be easier to find anthropologists, who as scientists have supposedly been studying food all along.)

We'd sure welcome them to come out and play anyway. Online they could even remain anonymous and say what they really think, though they'd still hurt the feelings of any mainstream but flawed author. That's always the best corrective for those darn superficial journalists as well.

But that would bring us back to useful output and demonstrating the worthiness of the endeavor, as Shaw posed previously.

And can you imagine what would happen if a few "genuine chefs," anonymous or otherwise, ever started to weigh in at eGullet?

[g.johnson]

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.

[Wilfrid]

Sure, there are those in traditional Philosophy departments who let politics dictate all their conclusions.

Not really wanting to open a debate, just to say that I find such a characterization completely unrecognizable, and I've hung around a number of "traditional" Philosophy departments. I guess you are talking about the States rather than the UK, but even so, my experience was an utter dearth of political understanding or engagement in such departments, even when the subject matter they were addressing had clear political implications.

And I largely disagree with Oraklet too. Much of the work quietly going on in the humanities has no political consciousness or content whatsoever - whether or not it has political implications. Imagine limitless hordes of scholars checking the punctuation in obscure Ben Jonson folios, trying to decide whether there was a third source for Matthew's gospel, arguing about the recovered fragments of Empedocles, and trying to solve the sorites problem. That's what it's like. The radical chic dudes with the Che tee-shirts planning to build barricades out of second-hand copies of Of Grammatology are a minority.

At the same time, there are plenty of political agendas in the sciences, stopping short, for the most part, of altering the data (which is to agree with Shaw and g. johnson at once).

[oraklet]

and now it is oraklet who is in danger of being eaten by the wilf.

just one last defense: investigating in kommas is, i believe, supposed to reveal something that has to to with the meaning of a text. it's a question of "what does it mean" as opposed to "how does it work". i know this is over-simplyfying it, but then, i'm not a trained philosopher!

it's a good thing we've got you lurking around the flock, wilf.

[Wilfrid]

I'm harmless. I promise.

[hollywood]

Analyze this: I'll have 3 chili dogs and a frosted orange.

[chefette]

This causes me to recall a question I had at dinner the other night with Steve Klc, Malawry, and Wilfrid. Is it really possible that so much of what we eat was developed by accident? I simply CANNOT believe that so many things can be attributed to the cosmic equivalent of "Hey, he got peanut butter on my chocolate..."

I think Culinary anthropology would be rather interesting, especially if it explained whatever possessed us to start genetically altering and consuming things that were reputedly poisonous to humans in their natural states.

[srhcb]

"I'm not a culinary anthropologist, but..."

Alton Brown does feature same on his show.

For the equivalent of a Poor-Persons Degree in Culinary Anthropology, just get yourself a subscription to Gastronomica.

[Vivian]

Mostly interesting subject.

Who can deny that History of Food is irresistible for foodies and not only to them. Even the history of marshmalows seems more interesting than the 100 years war of Europe sometimes.

For decades, Food and food habits were part of the studies of anthropology. To be exact , you couldn't claim that you were serious with anthropology if you excluded food habits from your survey field.

But the question is if we have enough material to built studies in Culinary Anthropology.

I think that on the level of a masters degree yes :-)

So are food historians a bunch of people who sit around wasting time by performing grandiose desertation of the social role of fava bean just because we cannot offer studies on culinary anthropology in a bachelors degree?

Well, you don't become a psychiatrist in the first year of your studies, the same way you have a long way in order to be able to have an opinion in the social role of fava bean.

And in case you find such a task useless there is some points regarding History of Food.

If it wasn't for olive oil and the domestication of the olive tree, script wouldn't be invented. You have to have studied a lot in order to jump into this conclusion ;-)

Have some more of "useless" info :

When Joseph was sold by his brothers, the buyers were merchants of spices in their way to Arabia to Egypt; the incident is a turning point in the traditional history of Israel.

The hunger of spices has brought about some of the great events in our history, including the opening if the sea route around Africa by Vasco de gama and almost simultaneously the discovery by Christofer Colombus of the New World which as he hastned to explain to his sponsors , was stock with old and new spices.

As enthralling as the gold of El Dorado the legendary cinnamon of la Canela led Gonzalo Pizarro and his 2000 strong expedition to axhaustion and death in the forest of Equador and yes you understood well.

This hunt for American cinammon lead to an astonishing achievement : a breakaway party, under Francisco de Orellana, were the first Europeans ever to discover the whole course of the Amazon...

I will leave the Freudian implication of the French Fry to the journalists and as an historian I will keep all these fascinating stories to narrate to my students and to show them the way to find the threads in the vapours of their kitchen :)