ANTH 286 - Food in its Cultural and Social Contexts

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Food exists at the intersections of culture, power, and history. This course explores a variety of frameworks for understanding food choices and constraints. We consider industrialized systems of food production and their implications for social life, and how responses to these systems have shifted not only dietary patterns, but also social relations and ideas about what counts as “good” food. We also focus on how the ritualized or politicized consumption of particular foods can affirm connections between invisible worlds and peoples of the past on the one hand, and contemporary life, place, and status in the physical present, on the other. Topics and issues to be addressed include food justice and problems of unequal access; “sustainable” farming and “local” foods; food practices in the construction of identity; and the links between slavery, colonialism, and the emergence of the industrial food system. Ms. Lowe Swift.

Two 75-minute periods.