Anthropology of Food

India is well known in the West for the historical prevalence of vegetarianism. One can wonder about the evolution of eating habits in this country: does economic growth, and the dynamics of globalization and urbanization associated with it, induce a sharp increase in meat consumption? In other words, is India experiencing a “nutrition transition”?

Cet article interroge les reconfigurations spatiales et organisationnelles de l’abattage dans le monde indien. En s’appuyant sur des recherches menées entre 2011 et 2014 dans l’État du Tamil Nadu, il met en lumière les processus qui sous-tendent ces reconfigurations. En Inde, les configurations spatiales de l’organisation du travail dans les abattoirs municipaux diffèrent de celles à l’œuvre dans les abattoirs industriels. Dans l’abattoir municipal de Chennai, la saignée, la dépouille, l’éviscération et la découpe se font dans un même lieu. Cependant, une frontière nette et hermétique sépare la section des caprinés de celle des bovinés : cette frontière peut être comprise comme l’inscription dans l’espace de l’abattoir d’une hiérarchie de l’impureté qui affecte les individus et les viandes. Plus généralement, les lieux d’abattage sont des arènes de mobilisation politique où prennent place des conflits opposant les bouchers traditionnels, les décideurs politiques, les groupes agro-industriels, les experts scientifiques, les militants écologistes ou animalistes et les partisans du nationalisme hindou. Cet article montre que les différentes logiques de localisation et configurations techno-spatiales des lieux d’abattage renvoient à différents régimes de régulation de l’impureté organique, morale ou religieuse à laquelle les groupes dominants associent la viande en Inde.

This article discusses the topic of food scarcity, hunger, and survival strate- gies in the context of the 1992–1995 Bosnian War. I open up the question of the role of food in the armed conflict using prevailingly the example of Srebrenica (and partially Sarajevo) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I have undertaken long-term ethnographic fieldwork between 2013–2018. I argue that the people concentrated in the UN ‘Safe Area’ of Srebrenica were intentionally subjected to mass starvation prior to the genocide. One of the most commonly adopted strategies against the food insecurity was food self-provisioning. In particular, I focus on the everyday strategies that emerged during the armed conflict with a focus on humanitarian aid and the consumption of wild and semi-wild plants. I am trying to show that the bio-cultural knowledge of food and food self-sufficiency play an important role in increasing the individual survival chance in times of overall material scarcity and starvation.

L 'imaginaire gastronomique constitue un enjeu impor tant de la vie sociale et culturelle d'un pays, que les sciences de l'information et de la communication ne peuvent manquer d'explorer avec un arrière-plan sociologique et historique. Le contexte de la Roumanie permet d'appréhender une problématique tout à fait par ticulière, centrée sur la résurgence et la redéfinition des signes de l'imaginaire gastronomique sous les traits de la postmodernité. Cela signifie à la fois une réévaluation des rites sous le régime de la déconstruction des pratiques de table et sous l'influence des régimes d'esthétisation et de restauration symbolique de la table. La recherche por te principalement sur la présence d'un modèle ou d'un éthos gastronomique « à la française » dans la symbolique de la table en Roumanie. La première par tie du livre dresse un état d'ar t des théories et des concepts sur la gastronomie à la confluence du sociologique et du sémiotique en communication. Sur cette base théorique il est question d'aborder le contexte roumain sous l'influence, mais aussi dans une relation dynamique avec le modèle gastronomique de la table française. La recherche prend ensuite en charge l'analyse d'un terrain et d'un corpus, afin d'appréhender, au plus près, les processus de signification mis en jeu par l'imaginaire gastronomique.

Food is perceived as probably the most distinctive aspect of Italian identity both in Italy and abroad. Food culture is central both to the way Italians mark their national identity and to the consolidation of Italianicity in a global context.  However, gastronomic identity, just like other aspects of identity, is a continuous construction that consolidates through practice across history and geography rather than an essence to be discovered in a purified moment of origin, a well-delimited site, a single product or recipe. Creolization and hybridization are indeed a feature of any cuisine. This is particularly the case for Italian cuisine, exposed as it has been to a variety of influences throughout its history. This introduction illustrate the rationale for putting toghether a collection on Italians and food and sets the major coordinates for the study of italianicity at the table.

People have harnessed beneficial microbes to preserve, protect, and improve food for thousands of years. However, the significance and techniques of food fermentation are poorly understood in prehistoric archaeology. This paper explains what food fermentation is and discusses its relevance in an early farming context. It sets out the beginnings of a theoretical and material framework that can be drawn upon for further study of this crucial but overlooked aspect of prehistoric food cultures. Focus is on the British Neolithic, but the central concepts are applicable in other periods and places.

We undertake an unorthodox approach and investigate dietary and behavioural restrictions in the practice of Western ayahuasca drinking in comparison to indigenous Amazonian practices of dieting often believed to be the source of the “Western ayahuasca dieta”. Combining readings of Amazonian ethnography with the authors’ ethnographic research in neoshamanic contexts of ayahuasca drinking in Australia, the United States, and Peru, we consider how the practice of ayahuasca dieting has become detached from indigenous cosmologies and sanitized into a series of techniques that Westerners employ in the hope of attaining certain psychological and spiritual traits. We consider the dislocation of ayahuasca from indigenous cosmologies of reciprocity and predation—in which issues of human-environment relations are sanctioned and produced via shamanism—to a Western practice where “plant spirits” or “plant medicines” from an indigenous “tradition” meet the demands of the individual’s self-healing and personal development. This is explored by analysing key examples of indigenous food shamanism among indigenous Amazonian cultures in contrast to Western neoshamanic explanatory models of dieting, prescriptions to drink ayahuasca, and to the emic concept of “integration”. The comparison suggests how contradictions and limitations may occur when spiritual beliefs grounded in radically different social, economic and cosmological environments are appropriated and reinvented.

The city of Zagreb has a large network of food markets, as much as twenty-three of them, one in each of the larger parts of the city. The most famous is Dolac, situated right next to the main city square, on the site of a medieval settlement surrounding the church of St. Mary. Although the food markets in the city cannot be viewed apart of their main function and outside of the economic framework, their unlikely survival and their attractiveness to the modern consumer stem from the social rituals taking place there. Therefore, we will see Dolac as a communication hub within the city, an urban narrative with multiple meanings where private intertwines with public, as well as economic with social and symbolic. The central theme of this paper will be the relationship between the traders and the buyers and the values traditionally instilled in purchasing food in this manner. Going to the food market is quite different from purchasing food in supermarkets. When compared to the experience of going to the food market, supermarkets could simply be touted as non-places, "space(s) which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity", as defined by French anthropologist Marc Auge (2005,75). In this paper we will focus our attention on the development of sociability - a social interaction that we find to be crucial for the survival of food markets in the contemporary consumer society. We will try to give a detailed description of the central Zagreb food market and the complex personal relations between all the involved parties, as well as to offer a possible research questions applicable to food markets in general. Ethnological and anthropological research of food markets require a special approach because they are not solely a place for exchange of goods, but they also carry all the multiple meanings that the food always encompasses. The food as a language that communicates different meanings is especially interesting on food markets because it is a place where the economic and social interaction via food takes place between the participants in the process of trade. We will be mostly focused on social dynamics of the food market and especially the elements encompassing the interrelations of traders and buyers.

Este estudo visa compreender como se dá a representação da gastronomia da Itália no Rio Grande do Sul, a partir da construção e consolidação da “culinária típica” italiana por parte dos imigrantes que vieram para o estado no final do século 19, usando, para isso, o recorte de como é retratada esta comida por parte dos restaurantes ditos "típicos" italianos na região da serra e da capital do RS. Após a contextualização sobre a regionalização da gastronomia italiana, foi desenvolvido um método de análise para verificar a questão de pesquisa, com a construção de um método comparativo desenvolvido a partir de análise documental, usando o cardápio destes restaurantes e a literatura e receituários originários de diferentes regiões da Itália. As principais conclusões inferem que, na amostra analisada, a culinária típica italiana retratada no RS é bastante semelhante ao que se encontra na gastronomia italiana, embora limitada a uma região específica do país.

For Mongols, sharing food is more than just eating meals. Through a process of “opening” and “closing”, on a daily basis or at events, in the family circle or with visitors, sharing food guarantees the proper order of social relations. It also ensures the course of the seasons and the cycle of human life. Through food sharing, humans thus invite happiness to their families and herds. Sandrine Ruhlmann has lived long months, since 2000, in the Mongolian steppe and in the city. She describes and analyses in detail the contemporary food system and recognizes intertwined ideas and values inherited from shamanism, Buddhism and communist ideology. Through meat-on-the-bone, creamy milk skin, dumplings or sole-shaped cakes, she highlights a whole way of thinking and living.

Text revised and expanded by Sandrine Ruhlmann
Translated from the French by Nora Scott

Translated from L’appel du bonheur. Le partage alimentaire mongol by Sandrine Ruhlmann, first published in French in 2016 by the Centre d’Études Mongoles et Sibériennes, as the 5th volume of the series Nord- Asie, the supplement to Études mongoles & sibériennes, centrasiatiques & tibétaines.

ISBN 978-90-04-40965-1
https://brill.com/view/title/54850?lang=en

Cette recherche est une incursion dans les recherches académiques concernant les pratiques et les représentations liées au culinaire en Roumanie, à commencer par les observations de terrain des ethnologues et folkloristes, en passant par l'école gustienne, la période communiste jusqu'aux écrits des anthropologues après 1989. Une telle investigation est justifiée par l'intérêt de mettre en place des cours universitaires et des directions de recherche au niveau académique, car ce domaine d'études connaît aujourd'hui un intérêt croissant. Il est admis que les pratiques alimentaires ont une histoire propre et des formes particulières à chaque société (Mennell, 1984/1985), la nourriture étant considérée une des plus importantes marques identitaires (Flandrin & Montanari, 1996 : 320-324), car elle constitue une mémoire, une histoire dans la vie moderne/actuelle (Barthes, 1961 : 977-986). D'autant plus que l'UNESCO inclut dans son Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel des éléments de patrimoine culinaire dans ses listes représentatives, le besoin d'identifier et d'adhérer à cet héritage culturel devient une façon de faire face au désordre contemporain (Mohen, 1999 : 18).