MA Anthropology of Food

A Dissertation of 10,000 words (excluding bibliography, appendices, etc., but including footnotes) is a required element of all MA Anthropology Degrees. The topic of the dissertation is left to students to decide according to their interests and subject to the agreement of the relevant Programme Convenor. The dissertation should show an appropriate command of anthropological theory and the relevant literature, as well as the capacity to apply this to the topic in question. Students should also demonstrate an understanding of the specialised field of their degree.

This module takes research methods as philosophically and practically exciting techniques and attitudes that allow us to know and understand the world better. The material addresses the history and foundations of anthropological knowledge, and describes some of the key concepts in anthropological methodology by using 'ethnographic writing' as a guide. The module encourages self-reflexivity, ethical conduct, and an anticipatory awareness of research practice and design. We explore ideas such as participant observation, the field, fieldwork, fieldnotes, interviewing and the ways in which scales of knowledge (local and global) can be brought into conversation through well-thought through methodology.

In this module we explore the complex and often paradoxical relationship between place, mobilities and food. We critically interrogate claims made about food system 'delocalisation', 'deskilling' and 'gastro-anomie'. We examine food markets, street foods and restaurants as sites of both cultural production and labour exploitation, of social interaction, cosmopolitanism and open debate, and of social control, surveillance and spatial cleansing. We explore contemporary forms of ethical food activism, including in the digital realm, and consider the complex role of food in migration.

Food and eating are fundamental to human life and health and play profound roles in the construction of social bodies, from families and kinship groups to religious groups and states. Further, food mediates our relationships with non-human beings and surroundings. In this module, we emphasise that our reliance on food for nutritional sustenance is inseperable from food's social, cultural and ecological dimensions. As such, the transformation of food habits and food systems are a central part of human experiences and world histories. We explore cultural diversities and historical change in food production and distribution, eating, cooking and sharing, recycling and wasting, and the classifying, celebrating and prohibiting of food and drink.

This module guides students through key concepts and theories that have underpinned the discipline of social/cultural anthropology over the last five decades, with particular attention to how theoretical concerns and orientations are continually rethought and retooled to address contemporary conditions. The module consciously departs from the conventional “canon” (i.e., the “founding fathers” approach) to offer a more inclusive and vibrant picture of the discipline’s (post-1960s) theoretical shifts. But it does so without overlooking the reverberations of anthropology’s past colonial entanglements, and without giving up its older core question: what does it mean to be human? Weekly class sessions and readings address a variety of topics across the anthropological spectrum, without diluting their analytical and empirical richness.

This module introduces students to a range of current debates and research topics in the academic study of food, as well as to some examples of practical application of food-related issues in non-academic fields such as campaigning, policy, overseas development, activism, tourism, and documentary film-making. The module is based on students' attendance and participation in the SOAS Food Studies Centre's regular research seminar, the Food Forum, providing an opportunity for students to learn from active researchers and practitioners. The Food Forum Seminar module encourages seminar participation, student interaction, and development of reflective and critical thinking skills. This is a core element of the MA Anthropology of Food programme, complementing the theoretical concepts and ethnographic texts presented in 723 Diet, Society and Environment,  722 Food, Place and Mobility, 797A Directed Practical Study: Placements in the Field, and the hands-on ethnographic methods training in 702 Ethnographic Research Methods.

Students taking this module identify an institution, organisation or enterprise in which to work as an intern. The module is designed to afford students the opportunity to gain valuable work experience in an area closely related to their field of study and to situate such work experience squarely within the context of their field of study, providing the opportunity for guided reflection on the relationship between theory and practice.

Special Theme (2024/25): The Cultural Politics of Chinese Food

We explore key themes in the anthropology of Chinese societies through the lens of food and its cultural politics. In China, food figures prominently in the formation and expression of cultural identities, majority-minority interactions, political power, gender, religious practice, and everyday social relations. Longstanding concerns about food security have increasingly given way to anxieties about food safety and dietary health and renewed interest in culinary tourism and heritage. Food also mediates the relationship between China and the world and shapes the experiences of Chinese in the diaspora. The course addresses current issues and debates surrounding food systems and food practices, as they pertain to Chinese societies and peoples. Topics covered include: food safety and social trust; the culture and politics of banqueting; cultural understandings of body, health and nutrition; food and urban space; food and diasporas; ethnicity and nationalism; meat production, consumption, and avoidance; and famine, memory and moral economies.

This module introduces students to ethnographic studies in and of a particular region in Sub-Saharan Africa, its resident populations, and its diasporas, viewed through a variety of interconnected topics that have been important in the anthropological literature. With a particular focus on West Africa, East Africa, or Southern Africa, students will have the opportunity to explore classic and contemporary anthropological themes such as social organization, political economy, religion, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, personhood, the body, consumption, labour and livelihoods, violence and justice, and social identities, as they take shape in particular locales. The module also encourages students to consider how anthropological and historical understandings help us to recognize the fundamentally interconnected and global nature of any nation, subregion, or region, whose boundaries are often designated or shift as a result of colonial, post-colonial, and neo-colonial social processes and power relations.

This module combines theory and anthropological case studies to help students develop a critical knowledge of approaches to address contemporary global challenges in sustainability. It seeks to deepen students' awareness and understanding of how people around the world apprehend and deal with the pressing social and environmental challenges they face, and the range of concepts and practices enacted to deliver sustainable futures. The module invites students to grapple with the contested and culturally-situated nature of these paradigms, and how they are underpinned by forms of economic and political power.

What is migration? Is this the “age of migration”? What is Diaspora and what challenges do diasporic communities bring to modern political constructions such as the nation-state, national “imagined” communities, citizenship and their associated metaphysics of sedentarism? This course will explore these issues by critically engaging with the ways in which migration and diaspora have been understood historically and in modern and contemporary times. Different theories, approaches, and disciplinary angles will be introduced and discussed. We will also consider what de-colonising approaches to migration and diaspora might look like. By drawing on established and less charted bodies of work on migration studies, diaspora and identity, transnationalism, postcolonial and de-colonial studies the course offers an interdisciplinary approach to the emergence of diasporas, the reformulation of 'home' and the simultaneous instability and reinforcement of nation-states.

This module deepens student understanding of key concepts in medical anthropology with a special focus on a) the materiality of bodies, substances, and practices, and b) science and technology studies that explore how knowledge comes into being, how it gains traction in the world, and how it shapes existing subjectivities and creates new ways of being and relating.

Food and foodways—the practices associated with food’s procurement, preparation, and consumption—hold profound symbolic, social, economic, and cultural values that are often time and space specific. As such, food forges a crucial aspect of individual’s identity making, collective memory and, ultimately, heritage. This module aims to give students of how heritage is defined and how food becomes heritage. In this module, we will examine how the study of food as heritage can help discern broader trends of how the past is selectively used in the present for the future for socio-political, cultural, and economic ends.
Throughout the term, case studies will be used from throughout the world to study each week’s theme. In the first few weeks, we will build an understanding of heritage, the multitudinous ways it is defined from the most local to international levels, and how food develops heritage value in addition to its vital value. This will include examining the way food and foodways are made to be heritage from the top-down, by international cultural organisations like UNESCO and national governments, and from the grassroots, by local citizens, refugees, and immigrants. In the latter half of the term, we will look at how food as heritage intersects with specific socio-political and -economic phenomena, including nationalism, tourism, diaspora, food sovereignty, and war. Throughout each week, we will come to learn through food how heritage is a process. Its meaning is always dynamic through place and time. By extension, the heritage value of food or foodways can act to build commensality or often conflict between groups.

Please note: this module is only available to students on the MA Anthropology of Food programme.

The aim of this module is to enable students to understand and evaluate major policy debates on the role of agriculture in development. To do so, the course will consider in some depth the relevant theoretical and empirical literature on: the necessary for structural change in agriculture-dependant societies; the operation of agricultural factor and commodity markets, including international markets; the nature of rural societies and the characterisation of farmers; the nature of food markets and the role of agriculture in improving welfare. Both mainstream and heterodox approaches will be investigated.