The Anthropology of Food and Eating

Abstract

The study of food and eating has a long history in anthropology, beginning in the nineteenth century with Garrick Mallery and William Robertson Smith. This review notes landmark studies prior to the 1980s, sketching the history of the subfield. We concentrate primarily, however, on works published after 1984. We contend that the study of food and eating is important both for its own sake since food is utterly essential to human existence (and often insufficiently available) and because the subfield has proved valuable for debating and advancing anthropological theory and research methods. Food studies have illuminated broad societal processes such as political-economic value-creation, symbolic value-creation, and the social construction of memory. Such studies have also proved an important arena for debating the relative merits of cultural and historical materialism vs. structuralist or symbolic explanations for human behavior, and for refining our understanding of variation in informants' responses to ethnographic questions. Seven subsections examine classic food ethnographies: single commodities and substances; food and social change; food insecurity; eating and ritual; eating and identities; and instructional materials. The richest, most extensive anthropological work among these subtopics has focused on food insecurity, eating and ritual, and eating and identities. For topics whose anthropological coverage has not been extensive (e.g., book-length studies of single commodities, or works on the industrialization of food systems), useful publications from sister disciplines-^primarily sociology and history-are discussed.

The Moral Justification Behind a Climate Tax on Beef in Denmark

“…In calling for government intervention in our food choices we enter into charged territory; food choices are often perceived as private and very personal, in that much of our identity and views are reflected in the food we choose to eat (Mintz and Du Bois 2002). Even those who are not critical of government regulation as such can therefore be opposed to interventions in their right to choose what to put on their plates.…”

Serving a heterogeneous Muslim identity? Private governance arrangements of halal food in the Netherlands

“…In multicultural societies, religiously inspired food standards assist in the creation of group boundaries (Fischler 1988;Mintz and Du Bois 2002) and help immigrants, which form a religious minority in the receiving countries, to reconnect with their original culture (Weller and Turkon 2015). They are an expression of religious and cultural identity.…”

Factors influencing dietary fat intake among black emerging adults

“…Lastly, food served within faith-based settings may be seen as a way to connect people to others and their faith and/or solidify one's membership in a group (Mintz & Du Bois, 2002). As previously discussed in Chapter 2, "Food has traditionally been a catalyst for social interaction…for some Blacks, eating is an 'intimate' or a 'spiritual' experience that is shared with others" (Kittler & Sucher, 2008, p. 220).…”