Gendered Symbols, Gendered Roles. DUE Date 16 March 2019

Studying food inevitably involves studying gender relations. We will talk, first, about the symbolic associations that certain foods themselves have – foods and also drinks come to symbolise the qualities which a particular culture associated with masculinity, and the qualities a particular culture associated with femininity. These symbolic associations vary across cultures. Second, we will talk about gender and the allocation of certain roles surrounding food production, cooking, shopping and serving.

Submit a response, of no more than 200 words, to the following question:

What ‘messages’, according to Anne Allison, are packed into the Japanese obento boxes she analyses?

Reference(s):

• Anne Allison, Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus. In Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik (eds), Food and Culture: A Reader, Routledge: New York and London, 2013, 154-172.

The Andean Diet and Ethno Medical Concepts of Health and Disease, Due Date 26 March 2019

Research into malnutrition in an Andean community in Peru.

Submit a response, of no more than 200 words, to the following question:

What meanings do potatoes hold in the Peruvian Andes?

Reference(s):

• J. Weismantel, Tasty meals and bitter gifts: Consumption and production in the Ecuadorian Andes, Food and Food ways, vol. 5, no. 1, 1991, 79-94.
• Corr, Reciprocity, Communion, and Sacrifice: Food in Andean Ritual and Social Life, Food and Food ways, vol. 10, no. 1, 2002, 1-25.

High Food, Low Food; Fast Food, Slow Food: Part One, Due Date 30 March 2019

This week deals with the rise of the industrialized global food system in the post WW2 period. We will cover the centrality of corn in the American food chain, the rise of fast food, and industrialized methods of animal slaughter.

Debate PREPARATION:

In class this week, we will be debating the following proposition: We need to change the way we eat. Prepare one point for this proposition and one point against. Include examples. Your preparation can be rough – it is acceptable to submit notes. Your submission should not exceed one page.

Reference(s):

• Timothy Pachirat, excerpts from Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 140-161.
• Michael Pollan, The Meal, In the Omnivore’s Dilemma. England: Penguin Books, 2007, 109-119.
• Julie Guthman, Healthy to Eat, Unhealthy to Grow, The Conversation, 2018:https://theconversation.com/healthy-to-eat-unhealthy-to-grow-strawberries-embody-the-contradictions-of-california-agriculture-86907
• Angela Stuesse, A Bone to Pick, in Scratching out a living: Latinos, Race and Work in the Deep South, Berkeley: University of Cal. Press, 2016, 120-146.

The Way to a Person’s Identity is through their Stomach Due Date 30 March 2019

Submit a summary, of no more than 300 words, of any one of the required. Be sure to specify the reading you are summarising at the outset.

Reference(s):

• Mandy Thomas, Transitions in Taste in Vietnam and the Diaspora, the Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 1, 2004, 54-67.