This course examines the place of food in society and includes discussions of identity, taste, taboos, ritual, traditions, nationalism, health, alcohol use, civilizing society, globalism, and the global politics of food.

Food is necessary to stay alive, yet it is always transformed symbolically through the social meanings and settings in which it is produced, consumed, and distributed. Food is the backbone of society and sociability, including equality, inequality, and enslavement. Food is the base of every economy. Food marks social differences, boundaries, bonds and contradictions. Eating is a continually evolving enactment of gender, family, community and self-identity. In this class, we will think about how food and its structures create social groupings, solidarity, well-being, as well as exclusion, as food scarcity damages the human community and the human spirit as well as the brain and bodily functions. We will focus on the participation of food in societies by discussing a series of key topics within social anthropological and archaeological studies, including identity, taste, taboos, ritual, traditions, nationalism, sovereignty, justice, transformative foods such as alcohol, health, civilizing society, and food globalism. Through a series of lectures, readings, films and projects we will explore the important yet perhaps un-marked place of food in shaping our place in the world as well as our relationship to all other humans, through time.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills