Template for Book Review Food Culture & Society

Terminal week marked the publication of Eating Civilization: An Anthropological Guide to Food by Gillian Crowther. In commemoration, and with the author's permission, we'd like to share the introduction to the book.

Click here to read the introduction, "Setting the Anthropological Table."

To read an interview with the author, please encounter last calendar week's blog posting.

For those of you education courses on the anthropology of food, or food studies courses of any kind, we're also very pleased to share two potential pupil assignments with you. These were used by the author of the book, Gillian Crowther, in her 2nd-twelvemonth undergraduate course in the spring of 2013. They are extracted straight from her syllabus for the course, which focused on BC Lower Mainland food culture:

Consignment One: Fourth-60 minutes Field Notes and Fieldwork Papers

All social anthropologists when doing fieldwork will keep a comprehensive periodical or field notes concerning their understanding of the textile they see during daily participant observation. Information technology is a record of events and an interpretation of those events. Field notes include descriptive details, questions that are raised by new circumstances, and demonstrate a general engagement with the fieldwork context, such equally noting sometimes very ordinary facts and conversations, or public soapbox, about the topic the fieldworker is trying to understand. For example, in my field notes from Massett I attended many community feasts, and on occasion helped prepare the stew for the feast. In my notes I included details most the context, who I met, why they were there, what we did together, where the ingredients came from, how the stew was cooked, by whom, how it was served, who was invited, and who attended, what people said most the event, the stew, and who they said this to, and who they did not.… I asked people what they idea nigh feasting in general, and why information technology was important, and then combined this with my observations almost how the Haida had long used feasting as a style of demonstrating rank and maintaining the social lodge. In a like way you are writing your field notes based on two of the following topics focused on the food culture of the Lower Mainland. For each topic I will expect to find evidence of half dozen hours of observation, participation, conversation, eating(!), cooking, shopping: the doing of Lower Mainland food culture. You lot will exist expected to indicate how the six hours were spent past including a brief time sheet. The evidence can be in the form of handwritten notes, photographs, menus, interviews, recipes, packaging, etc.

You can write in the first person, as it is your experiences and insights that will form the basis of your assay, just you will then reflect on these from an anthropological perspective, addressing the social and cultural messages that are communicated through the fieldwork topic you are addressing. For example, if you choose to write a review of a restaurant you will draw your experiences, then add together an assay based upon the anthropological discussions of authenticity, culinary tourism, otherness, presentation strategies, cuisines, and identity work.

Each newspaper volition exist between four-6 pages, excluding your reference pages and attached field notes, such as pictures, adverts, menus, etc.

You will be marked on your power to:

• Utilize and discuss concepts from the grade such as the nature of diets, the characteristics of cuisine, the eating event, etc.
• Research the topic using academic sources
• Depict upon a wide range of relevant sources of food culture
• Interrogate and appraise the nature of nutrient culture inside the topic yous are addressing
• Present appropriate descriptions, facts, examples, and comparisons, based upon your participant-observation and enquiry, with citations
• Ask valid questions, reveal your marvel, and put forrard plausible answers
• Integrate your facts with interpretation and assay
• Utilize an anthropological perspective, i.e. fieldwork based, culturally relative, comparative, and holistic
• Include evidence of six hours of fieldwork for each newspaper by attaching documents and fourth dimension sheet.

Y'all will choose two of the following cocky-paced fieldwork exercises:

a) Diets: Eat Your Way To…

While humans have very specific nutritional needs we accept also culturally shaped the solution to those needs through our learned tastes and manner of eating. Humans have long wrestled with our ability to use food to shape our bodies, and evidence of this comes from the numerous "diets" that are bachelor for anyone to swallow their way to health, fitness, tummy flatness, intelligence, morality, etc. One quick Google search of "diets" brings at 21 million responses! This paper volition involve thinking nearly the diets that surround united states in the media, and the pressure that exists to shape your trunk to some arbitrary standard. You may want to focus upon one diet, or contrast two that have very unlike methods, such equally a become thin quickly diet, versus a lifestyle change diet to gainsay diabetes. You will demand to call back near the implications of diets, and how they relate to society'south obsession with the mode nosotros look.

b) Family unit Recipe

There is oftentimes a item dish that is a favourite in a family. Where did this come from? Whose recipe is it? Why is it important? What are the ingredients? What is the method? How is it served? When is it made? Is this a written recipe, or made from memory? Interview a family fellow member about the recipe and its significance. If possible make the recipe yourself and reflect on the significance of this enculturation. Explore the importance of this recipe for yous and your family, and when you lot would eat it together. You will need to describe your family background, and briefly note the occasions when the recipe is used.

c) Gastropolitics: Eating Together

This paper volition allow yous to examine the social and cultural dynamics of the "eating event" that you, your family unit, and/or friends engage in. You lot will address what the repast consists of and whether it is a special or an everyday meal. How many courses? The table settings, seating arrangements, society of serving, and conversations all contribute to understanding the implications of the repast for defining tightly-knit social groups. You lot should choose an actual meal you lot have recently attended, and remember about why such meals are so important to all humans, and what they tell u.s.a. about our social construction.

d) Fast Food: Eating Alone

Explore your ain eating habits by considering the fast food meals yous take during the twenty-four hour period when you're working or at school, and how the necessities of our "modern" life are catered to past fast nutrient franchises. Should we still consider this eating, or is it feeding? You should consider the types of foods, social interactions, and the associated sense of satisfaction to be gained from these locations. What is the packaging like? What is the structure of the meal? How exercise you feel afterwards? What does this eating style tell u.s. about the nature of society, and nutrient culture?

e) Nutrient Advertisement

Remember of the politics of nutrient advertizement—recollect someone is trying to convince you to eat their product, past making appeal to health, nutrition, toll, nostalgia—through some means. Take your local newspaper and look at the food advertising contained in adverts and flyers. What messages are beingness communicated? Are sure foods advertised to attract different age groups, genders, ethnic groups? What tells you this? Exercise some deport misleading messages? Do they advise a certain lifestyle, wellness benefit? Are they convincing?

f) Restaurant Review

This is non about writing a critical review of a eatery. Instead, it is well-nigh giving you the opportunity to get and taste the cuisine of some other civilisation. Yous should choose a eating house providing a fashion of food you take not tried before. Do some research into the cuisine, and then that y'all begin to learn the standard dishes, and styles, and so compare your inquiry to the real affair. You can explore this form of culinary tourism with a friend, if yous wish, and you lot may include their experiences and thoughts. You volition need to depict upon the characteristics of cuisines, notions of authenticity, and domestication. You may write about the cuisine your presentation volition exist focused on.

Consignment Ii: Cuisine Presentations

At the starting time of the semester y'all will be asked to sign up, as office of a three-person group, to nowadays a cuisine to the grade. The presentation will be fifteen minutes, with each person contributing equally (five minutes each). The presentation will follow the format of providing details about the 6 characteristics of a cuisine. Yous will exist expected to research the cuisine, and provide a 1 page handout for all the class with a synopsis of your findings. More details will be provided in class. I will marking the presentation, merely with the input of the rest of the class.

You will be marked on:

• The depth of research
• Power to include anthropological language and insights into the nature of the cuisine
• The clarity of delivery of the cloth
• Inventiveness
• Power to work every bit a squad
• The content of the handout

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Source: http://www.utpteachingculture.com/eating-culture-sample-student-assignments-for-the-anthropology-of-food/

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