Macquarie University

Food Across Cultures - ANTH203

We all eat. But what, when, how, how much and with whom we eat is bound up with questions of cultural difference, gender and power. The study of food and eating has long held a particular fascination for anthropologists—from subsistence strategies to nutritional intake, from food taboos to the social rules that structure how people eat together. This unit introduces students to the idea that the everyday activities of cooking and eating are packed with economic, medical, political and cultural meanings. We will focus first on some classic anthropological work on eating as a social practice. Then we move to the concerns of contemporary anthropology, examining industrialised globalised food production, consumption practices and identity. Throughout this course we are concerned with everyday eating practices, exploring the extraordinary variety of food likes and dislikes in a range of ethnographic contexts. Not only will we talk about food, we will also come together to share food.