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Cooking, Cuisine and Class in the Anthropology of Food Today
Key information
- Date
- to
- Time
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10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- 116 & Russell Room
About this event
The list of particpants is confirmed below
Admission
Invited guests only.
Convenors
Dr Jakob A. Klein
Professor Anne Murcott
2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Jack Goody’s Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge University Press). In this ambitious book, Goody compares the culinary cultures of preindustrial ‘Eurasia’ with those of sub-Saharan Africa, and seeks to explain why it is that differentiated, ‘high’ and ‘low’ cuisines developed across the former, but not in the latter. In the second part of the book, Goody considers the emergence of a ‘world cuisine’ of industrialized foods, and examines the role this plays in local contexts, particularly within the emerging class system of postcolonial Ghana.
Goody’s book was a seminal intervention in the anthropological study of food. Moving beyond sterile debates between proponents of ‘symbolic’ and ‘materialist’ approaches to food classifications, it encouraged serious attention to questions of power and inequality; to comparative understandings of historical processes – including ‘globalization’ – which both differentiated ‘food systems’ and articulated them; and to the complex interaction between symbolic systems, on the one hand, and situated practices of producing, distributing, preparing and consuming food, on the other. In doing so, Cooking, Cuisine and Class was instrumental in transforming the study of food from a long-standing but often marginalized interest among social anthropologists, to what has become a major area of enquiry in anthropology and cognate disciplines, including sociology and history.
In recognition of the enduring influence of Cooking, Cuisine and Class, the symposium convenes leading and emerging anthropologists, sociologists and social historians of food, based in the UK and internationally, at the SOAS Food Studies Centre to discuss themes raised in Goody’s work. Participants working in and between Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas will discuss their own research in relation to broader theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in the study of food in their respective regions, particularly in the last thirty years. The symposium – and the published workshop volume – will thus provide a broad-based and critical assessment of the current state and future possibilities of food studies, particularly within anthropology.
Programme
| Date/Time | Description |
|---|---|
| 19 March 2012 | |
| 10:00-10:30 | Welcome ~ Coffee/Tea/Biscuits |
| 10:30-12:00 |
Sami Zubaida (Professorial Research Associate, SOAS Food Studies Centre Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College)
Food for Drink: Mezze, Tapas and Co Discussant: Tom Selwyn (Visiting Professor, Department of Anthropology, SOAS, University of London) |
| 12:00-14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00-15:30 |
Françoise Sabban (Director of Studies and Research Director, Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS))
The milk issue in China: past and present Discussant: Jakob Klein (Lecturer in Social Anthropology, SOAS, Deputy Chair, SOAS Food Studies Centre, SOAS, University of London) |
| 15:30-15:45 | Coffee/Tea/Biscuits |
| 15:45-17:15 |
José Sobral (Senior Research Fellow, Insituto de Ciênsias Sociais (ICS). University of Lisbon)
The high and the low in the making of the Portuguese national cuisine Discussant: Richard Wilk (Provost Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University) |
| 17:15-18:45 |
Stephen Mennell (Professor Emeritus, School of Sociology, University College Dublin)
Indigestion in the Long Nineteenth Century: Aspects of English Taste and Anxiety, 1800-1950 Discussant: Anne Murcott (Professorial Research Associate, SOAS Food Studies Centre, Honorary Professor, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham) |
| 19:15 | Dinner |
| Date/Time | Description |
|---|---|
| 20 March 2012 | |
| 09:15 | Coffee/Tea/Biscuits |
| 09:30-11:00 |
James Staples (Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Brunel University)
Civilising tastes: from caste to class in South Indian foodways Discussant: Stephen Mennell (Professor Emeritus, School of Sociology, University College Dublin) |
| 11:00-12:30 |
Gracia Clark (Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University)
From Fasting to Fast Food in Kumasi, Ghana Discussant: Harry West (Professor of Anthropology, SOAS, Chair, SOAS Food Studies Centre, SOAS, University of London) |
| 12:30-14:30 | Lunch |
| 14:30-16:00 |
Johan Pottier (Professor of Anthropology with reference to Africa, SOAS, University of London)
Catering and Class in East London: The Bangladeshi experience Discussant: James L. Watson (Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Harvard University) |
| 16:00-16:15 | Coffee/Tea/Biscuits |
| 16:15-17:45 |
Emma-Jayne Abbots (Research Associate, SOAS Food Studies Centre, SOAS, University of London)
The Fast and the Fusion: Class, Colonialism and the Remaking of Comida Típica in Highland Ecuador Discussant: Richard Wilk (Provost Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University) |
| 17:45-18:45 | Concluding Discussion |
| 19:15 | Dinner |
Organiser: SOAS Food Studies Centre, Centres & Programmes Office
Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk
Contact Tel: 020 7898 4892/3
Sponsor: Research grant from the SOAS Faculty of Arts and Humanities