University of Edinburgh
School of Social and Political Studies
Social Anthropology
2011-12 (Semester 1)
Course Title: The Anthropology of Food
Course Code: SCAN10052
Semester 1: Thu 11.10 – 13.00, Seminar room 5, Chrystal Macmillan Bulding; +
1hr MSc tutorial every 2 weeks, time and place TBA.
Course convener: Professor Francesca Bray (francesca.bray@ed.ac.uk)
Office hours: Thu 15.00-16.30, Chrystal Macmillan Building Room 5.22.
Short description
`Man ist, was man isst' - we are what we eat, says the German proverb. Eating is a
basic biological requirement to sustain life, but what we eat and how we eat it is
not simply dictated by environment and technology, it is a mark of how we
understand ourselves, our place in society, and how we distinguish ourselves
from others. This course will draw on a range of anthropological research to
explore the culture, economics and politics of food in the modern world. We shall
investigate what a focus on food can contribute to the study of identity, memory,
gender, globalization and justice. We shall pay special attention to the political
economy of food, exploring what anthropology has contributed to understanding
and meeting the challenges of a deeply unjust global food-system, starting with
colonialism and now addressing the contemporary period in which governments
and planners which must grapple simultaneously with excess and desperation,
with ‘epidemics’ of obesity and ever-rising levels of chronic hunger.
Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course the students should have a thorough understanding of
the main currents in the anthropology of food, their articulations with the
broader discipline, and their potential for bringing key anthropological issues
into focus. They should be familiar with the most influential anthropological
analyses of food and its role in social or cultural formation, from the pioneering
studies of Malinowski and Audrey Richards, through the structuralists and the
political economists, to recent emphases on identity, meaning and memory or on
social movements and global assemblages. Critical analysis and discussion of
case studies and theoretical essays will build anthropological skills in evaluating
the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of different approaches.
Teaching
2-hour lecture each week (1 hour lecture by course convenor followed by 1 hour
of guest lecture, or film, + class discussion). 1 hour MSc tutorial every 2 weeks.
Attendance at lectures and tutorials is compulsory for all students.
Assessment
Assessment is based on two essays. The first, of 1500 words, is worth 30%, the
second, of 2500 words, is worth 70%. See the Honours Handbook for more
complete information about assessment procedures. Topics for the essays will
be posted on WebCT.
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Course work should be submitted in person (not by a friend or relative) to Miss
Katie Teague, the Administrative Secretary in Room 1.10, on or before 12 noon
on the specified dates, as follows:
1st essay (1500 words): due week 5, by 12.00 on Tuesday 18 October.
2nd essay (2500 words): due week 13, by 12.00 on Tuesday 13 December.
IMPORTANT: Essays must be submitted by you in person (not by a friend or
relative) to the Administrative Secretary, not to anyone else. Essays submitted by
email, fax or post will NOT be accepted.
You must submit 1 word-processed copy of the essay, which should have a cover
sheet with your examination number (but not your name), the course title, an
exact count of the number of words in the essay, and a plagiarism declaration.
Cover sheets are available from Room 1.10, Chrystal Macmillan Building.
In addition, you must also submit an electronic version for all coursework
and essays via WebCT by the same deadlines. The School is now using the
‘Turnitin’ system to check that essays submitted for honours courses do not
contain plagiarised material. Turnitin compares every essay against a
constantly-updated database, which highlights all plagiarised work.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR COURSEWORK AND ESSAYS ELECTRONICALLY
Create an essay file.
Save your essay with your exam number as the file name, e.g. 1234567.doc.
Do not include your name anywhere on the project to ensure anonymity.
Files must be in Word (.doc), rich text (.rtf), text (.txt) or PDF format.
Microsoft Publisher, Open Office and Microsoft Works files will not be
accepted. Failure to do this will cause delays in getting your project back to
you.
Open WebCT
Second, access WebCT through your MyEd portal. Open the relevant course
(under the ‘Courses’ tab).
Upload the essay file
At the Course Home Page click on the Essay Submission icon on the Course
Content page. This will take you straight into the submission page for your
assignment. (You can also access this through the Assignments tab situated
on the Course Tools bar at the left hand side of the page). Here you can
upload your essay as an attachment. – Just click on ‘add attachment’ and
select the file from your computer.
Click on Submit when you are ready.
Lateness and Length
Essays over the word limit will lose 10% of their marks. (This applies as much to
essays of 5 words over as to essays of 500 words over). This word limit includes
footnotes and appendices but not the bibliography.
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Any apparently deliberate misrepresentation of the word count or failure to
declare a word count will lead to a deduction of 20 marks. N.B. This can affect
your final result.
Five marks per working day will be deducted for assessed course work and
assessed essays handed in late. Assessed work arriving more than one week (five
working days) after the deadline will receive a mark of zero. It must however be
submitted, or you risk being recorded as not having completed the course; your
ability to graduate could be affected by failure to complete the requisite number of
courses.
Class organisation:
Readings: each week there are 3 required readings which you should go
through carefully as preparation for the lecture.
Further relevant readings, some theoretical, some ethnographic, are listed in the
Bibliographical guide on WebCT. They are not compulsory, nor are they
comprehensive. They are resources that you can explore for taking ideas further,
especially when writing your essays.
Honours students are always encouraged to read book-length studies and
monographs as well as short pieces, and a number are included below. Try to
read at least 3 of the books listed in the Bibliographical Gudie over the
course of the semester: there are some anthropological themes which are too
complex to be dealt with in an article, and a critical reading of a book is often
very helpful for exploring how anthropology as a discipline encourages us to
think. Essays which engage with books as well as articles will get you off to a
good start with the examiner!
Remember that your readings for this course not just about food – they are
ethnographic and theoretical resources for your anthropological studies more
generally, so as you read, connect.
Lectures: Lecture outlines are given in the syllabus below. They are intended to
help you select readings and to provide orientation in preparation for the
lecture, and to serve as memoranda for organising your notes and ideas
afterwards. They are not substitutes for the lecture.
Consultation: e-mail is of course an option, but it’s not the best medium for
anything but simple questions and answers. For proper discussion you are very
welcome to talk to me (after class, in office hours or by appointment) about any
aspect of the course, including the selection of essay topics.
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Syllabus
Please see Bibliographical guide (on WebCT) for additional reading
suggestions including books, articles, specialised journals, etc., and for the
references in the lecture introductions below.
Week 1. General introduction
No readings; lecture will outline important trends in the anthropology of food.
Film: The Kawelka: Ongka's Big Moka, Charlie Nairn and Andrew Strathern, 1976,
Granada Disappearing World; 52 min.
Week 2. Eating to live: food, nutrition and health
‘Underlying the rich symbolic universe that food and eating always
represent ... there is the animal reality of our living existence. It is not
separate from our humanity, but is an integral part of it. Only because
most of us eat plentifully and frequently and have not known intense
hunger may we sometimes too easily forget the astonishing, at times even
terrifying, importance of food and eating’ (Sidney W. Mintz, Tasting Food,
Tasting Freedom, p.4).
Like all other organisms, humans must ingest nutritive substances in order to
live, grow and reproduce themselves. Modern nutritional science classifies foods
into nutrient groups, identifies deficiencies, and defines parameters of healthy
eating; the messages it provides are by no means static, however, and there is
much debate about the extent to which it is possible or desirable to pin down
universals in human food needs - after all, for centuries the Inuit have survived
without ever eating their spinach, the Jains without any ‘high-quality’ protein.
Each culture has its own concept of what constitutes a ‘real food’ and a ‘balanced
diet’ - here symbolic analysis is useful, while the approach of political economy
allows us to focus on the power relations that constrain the availability of food
and thus shape our eating practices.
Readings for lecture:
Borré, Kristen (1991) ‘Seal blood, Inuit blood, and diet: a biocultural model of
physiology and cultural identity’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 5, 1
(Mar 1991): 48-62.
Caldwell, Melissa L. (2007) ‘Feeding the body and nourishing the soul: natural
foods in postsocialist Russia’, Food, Culture & Society 10, 1 (Spring 07): 4371.
Gross, Joan & Nancy Rosenberger (2010) ‘The double binds of getting food
among the poor in rural Oregon’, Food, Culture & Society 13, 1 (March
2010): 47-70.
Guest lecture: Tania Porqueddu
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Week 3. Forbidden fruit: interpreting food symbolisms
Frazer launched the symbolic anthropology of food in his section on Food in
Questions on the Customs, Beliefs and Languages of Savages (1907) which begins:
‘Do they eat everything edible? Or are certain foods forbidden?’ Frazer continues
through cannibalism and whom it is legitimate or customary to eat - these
questions, as Jack Goody points out (Cooking, Cuisine and Class: 10-11), continue
to interest anthropologists especially of psychoanalytic or structuralist bent.
Structuralist analysis supposes a series of linked structured systems, for example
‘with food, the ingredients in a dish, the dishes in a meal, the meals and dishes in
a cuisine would be seen as forming structured systems in which the elements are
relationships between qualities, tastes, smells, textures; some of the elements
would link these food systems to other systems - those perhaps evident in drink,
sexual regulations, magic and medicine, music and so forth. These systems might
be analysed as structural transformations of each other. Certain substances typically and classically blood, semen, milk, magical plants - would recur and
might be analysed as “operators” by means of which people make sense of their
daily experience of these different cultural systems’ (Richard Tapper & Sami
Zubaida, ‘Introduction’, in Zubaida & Tapper, Culinary Cultures of the Middle East:
16.) As Goody remarks, studies of food taboos, ritual meanings, or commensality,
tend to concentrate on consumption, on equations of food and sex or on the
forging of solidarity rather than on farming technology or political organization.
There is also an anthropological tradition, however, typefied by Marvin Harris
and favoured by sociobiologists, which argues that food taboos and practices are
ecologically or evolutionarily grounded.
Readings for lecture:
Douglas, Mary (1972) ‘Deciphering a meal’, Daedalus 101,1, Myth, Symbol, and
Culture (Winter, 1972): 61-81.
Gow, Peter (1989) ‘The perverse child: desire in a native Amazonian subsistence
economy’, Man n.s. 24, 4: 567-582.
Sobo, Elisa J. (1997) ‘The sweetness of fat: health, procreation and sociability in
rural Jamaica’, in Counihan and Esterik, Food and Culture: 256-71.
(WebCT)
Film: Sin tierra, no siamos Shuar (Without land, we are not Shuar). Granada
Centre for Visual Anthropology, dir. Stacey Williams, 2009.
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/vi
sualanthropology/archive/mafilms/2009/
Week 4. Food, fertility and social reproduction
Hospitality, food exchange and commensality are all considered fundamental
(yet fraught) elements in the creation and consolidation of social bonds and
values (Mayol, Tapper & Tapper, van Esterik, Wilson). In the modern West we
have been worrying for decades about the disappearance of the family meal and
what it may portend for society (Murcott). Political leaders are responsible for
assuring food for their subjects, sometimes directly through performing magic or
ritual (Malinowski, Linares), or through controlling and distributing grain
supplies (Meillassoux), sometimes indirectly, providing lavish feasts that assure
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the future - feasts are also events at which social ranking is confirmed or
renegotiated (Rappaport, Watson).
Food nourishes our bodies and allows us to grow and mature; however its
nurturing role goes much further. In many societies the fertility of fields and of
women are linked, and ancestors like children must be fed if society is to live and
prosper (Seaman, Thompson). Christian rituals assure worshippers eternal life
through partaking of the wine and the wafer that are the blood and body of
Christ, and in other societies too the dead provide food (and immortality) for the
living (Metcalf).
Readings for lecture:
Holtzman, Jon D. (2003) ‘In a cup of tea: commodities and history among
Samburu pastoralists in Northern Kenya’, American Ethnologist 30, 1 (Feb
2003): 136-155.
Thompson, Stuart E. (1988) `Death, food, and fertility’, in James L. Watson and
Evelyn S. Rawski (eds), Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China,
Berkeley, University of California Press: 71-108. (WebCT)
Yan, Yunxiang (1997) ‘McDonald's in Beijing: the localization of Americana’, in
Watson, Golden Arches East: 39-76. (WebCT)
Guest lecture: Siobhan Magee
MID-TERM ASSESSMENTS DUE TUESDAY 18 OCTOBER
Week 5. Food and gender
Activities around food are crucial in the structuring of gender roles and relations.
In almost every society male and female food-producing activities are
differentiated (Hugh-Jones, Sillitoe, A.I. Richards), though not always in ways
Westerners might expect. The values attached to the production and preparation
of food, and to foodstuffs, are also frequently bound up with ideals of femininity
or masculinity (Maclagan, Uzedonski).
The case of breast-milk is an interesting one: in Western traditions it is the key
symbol of nurturance, which is thus closely tied to femininity – but this is by no
means a universal belief (van Esterik, Gotttschang). Another intriguing issue is
the gendering of authoritative knowledge about ‘good’ eating practices (Jing,
Morsy).
Readings for lecture:
Jing, Jun (2000) ‘Food, nutrition and cultural authority in a Gansu village’, in Jing
Feeding China's Little Emperors: 135-59. (WebCT)
Maclagan, Ianthe (1994) ‘Food and gender in a Yemeni community’, in Zubaida &
Tapper: 159-72.
Uzendoski, Michael A. (2004) ‘Manioc beer and meat: value, reproduction and
cosmic substance among the Napo Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon’, JRAI
10: 883-902.
Guest lecture: TBC
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Week 6. Identity and distinction
This class looks at the role of food in the construction of identities and
differences between social groups, whether it be by gender and generation, by
nation, class, region or religion ... In Cooking, Cuisine and Class Goody raised the
issue of whether low and high, poor and rich are always distinguished by the
food they eat; Bourdieu provides a rich analysis of how working-class and
bourgeois French in the post-war period did differentiate themselves by food
practices (not necessarily determined by income alone). The literature on the
place of food in the formation of national or ethnic identities is huge (Appadurai,
Ohnuki-Tierney). The growth of the tourist industry has given a huge fillip to the
concept of ‘typical’ or ‘authentic’ local foods (Vizcarra Bordi), and for diaspora
communities foodways are usually a key tool for reconnecting to the imagined
community (Sutton, Mintz).
The historian Fernand Braudel suggests one useful approach to understanding
why food is such a powerful medium for shared identity, and for differences
within that shared identity, when he speaks of material culture, including food,
as a language: ‘[O]ur investigation takes us ... not simply into the realm of
material ‘things’, but into a world of ‘things and words’ - interpreting the last
term in a wider sense than usual, to mean languages with everything that man
contributes or insinuates into them, as in the course of his everyday life he
makes himself their unconscious prisoner, in front of his bowl of rice or slice of
bread’ (Braudel 1992: I,333). In times past both language and food used to
change more slowly (though foodstuffs have been travelling the world and
changing local habits for millennia), but in the modern world of communications
and media both change fast, groups identify themselves by special usages, and as
with language US foodways have been colonizing the world, with complex
results. Under pressure from outside, ‘traditional’ food may be mythologized
(Ohnuki-Tierney, Warde) or hybridized (Mintz [‘Eating American’]). Fasts or
food taboos characterized many religions, and in some of its contemporary
manifestations we might think of vegetarianism as a characteristic of a modern,
secular anti-capitalist religion (Lora-Wainwright, Willetts).
Readings for lecture:
Roseberry, William (1996) ‘The rise of yuppie coffees and the reimagination of
class in the United States’, American Anthropologist 98, 4: 763-775.
Rosenberger, Nancy (2007) ‘Patriotic appetites and gnawing hungers: food and
the paradox of nation-building in Uzbekistan’, Ethnos 72, 3: 339-360.
Sutton, David E. (2001), ‘Sensory memory and the construction of worlds’,
Remembrance of Repasts: 73-102.
http://anthro.siuc.edu/sutton/pages/repasts_chapter_3.html
Film: Views from Heavenly Lake. Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, dir.
Polly Vinken, 2010.
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/vi
sualanthropology/archive/mafilms/2010/
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Week 7. Hospitality (Sandy Robertson, guest lecturer)
Readings for lecture:
Robertson, A.F. (2010) ‘Conviviality in Catalonia’, Gastronomica 10, 1: 70-78.
(available on WebCT)
ADDITIONAL READINGS to be posted on WebCT later.
Film: Caught in a magic place. Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, dir.
Niccolo Patriarca, 2007.
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/vi
sualanthropology/archive/mafilms/2007/
Week 8. Global food systems I: farming systems, technological development
and political economy
One important characteristic of sedentary farming systems is that they allow
populations to expand far beyond the limits of hunter-gathering or pastoral
communities. Their technologies of production and storage permit them to
accumulate surpluses that reduce drastic seasonal or annual variations in food
supply. It is therefore generally presumed that agriculture permitted the
emergence of complex societies, characterized by increasingly elaborate
divisions of labour and social hierarchies. Social scientists have examined these
dynamics of growth and change from various angles. Some have been interested
in the relation between demographic growth and technological change (e.g. the
work published in the 1970s and 1980s by the feminist economist Ester
Boserup), others in the various technical and social trajectories by which farming
systems become more productive (Bray, Rice Economies), others in the relations
between forms of surplus accumulation and micro- or macro-political
organization, and the articulation between agrarian and industrial economies
(Meillassoux).
Urbanisation and the shift of labour from agriculture to industry, or more
recently to the service sector, have had a dramatic impact on food-producing
landscapes and seascapes (Mientjes), and the development and spread of
‘industrial farming’ continues apace. There is a latent presumption that
technological responses to environment are constrained by technical knowledge
but otherwise value-free. But landscapes can be read for their ideological content
just like any other human artefact (Bray, Williams, Richards). It is important to
understand that far more than productivity and biological conservation are at
stake in the current global drive to homogenize farming systems on the basis of
what are fundamentally Western capitalist values (Yapa).
Readings for lecture:
Bray, Francesca (1998): ‘A stable landscape? Social and cultural sustainability in
Asian rice systems’, in N. Dowling (ed), The Sustainability of Wet-Rice
Agriculture, Manila, IRRI, 1998: 45-66. (available on WebCT)
Mientjes, Antoon C. (2010) 'Pastoral communities in the Sardinian Highlands
(Italy): a view on social mobility', Ethnos 75, 2: 148 — 170
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Yapa, Lakshman (1998) ‘Improved seeds and constructed scarcity’, in Richard
Peet and Michael Watts (eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment,
Development, Social Movements, London and New York, Routledge, 1998:
69-85. (available through Library either on short loan in HUB or as ebook)
Film: The shrimpers. Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, dir. Austin
Paterek, 2008.
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/vi
sualanthropology/archive/mafilms/2008/
Week 9. Global food systems II: consumerism, commodity chains and redistributed risk
Hunter-gatherers depend on seasonal supplies and move from one place to
another as one food supply is exhausted and another becomes ready. Agriculture
and the associated technologies of food storage, processing-cooking, and
transport, offered means by which temporal and spatial irregularities of supply
could be reduced, allowing populations to settle and expand. One of the marked
effects (and engines) of modernization has been the subsidizing of industry by
agriculture, of the urban by the rural, of rich nations by poor nations. Cheap food
for urban workers has traditionally helped keep living costs and thus wages low,
underpinning the continuing growth of capitalism and the expansion of
consumption (Friedmann; Meillasoux; Mintz, Sweetness). In a consumer society
like ours, we take it for granted that food will be plentiful, in regular supply,
varied and cheap. In the UK in 2006, average household spending on food and
drink came to no more than 12% of weekly expenditure; a very interesting
breakdown is provided in UK Cabinet Office 2008. Cheap food is not necessarily
‘good’ food, however. While in ‘traditional’ societies portliness is usually a sign of
wealth, in industrial nations it is the poor who are more likely to be obese.
One justification for the globalization and capitalist organization of farming is
that improved methods produce higher yields, and more food to feed the world's
urban populations and the world’s hungry. The paradox, however, is that such
technical advances do not always increase the equity of food supply, and
abundance for consumers frequently depends upon the exploitation of producers
(Schlosser; Bletzer; Bowe); GM patented seeds are a case in point (Bray 2003,
Heller). Subsidies to farmers in rich countries distort supposedly ‘free’ markets
and put Southern producers at a serious disadvantage, as may the standards of
regulation imposed by powerful food-importing nations or blocs like the EU
(Guyer, Dunn). The effects of global engagement for poor producers or small
farmers have sometimes been beneficial, yet for the majority their livelihoods
are made more, not less, risky, thanks to the effects of cut-throat transnational
competition in buyers’ markets, increasingly stringent regulations, ever-rising
production costs, climatic fluctuations and changes in consumer preference (e.g.
Franklin, Heath & Menely, Friedberg). Meanwhile in poorer nations the shift to
export production of foods and other global commodities and services has
translated into food crises affecting urban consumers. Egypt is no longer selfsufficient in wheat and bread riots are a recurrent threat to the regime; in 2005
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the Indian government was nearly brought down when the price of onions
soared beyond most families’ budgets. Does it really make sense for a poor
nation to abandon small farming (Murray Li)?
Readings for lecture:
Bestor, Theodor (2001) `Supply-side sushi: commodity, market, and the global
city', American Anthropologist 103, 2: 76-95.
Errington, Frederick & Deborah Gewertz (2008) ‘Pacific island gastrologies:
following the flaps’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n.s. 14, 3
590-608.
Dunn, Elizabeth C. (2005) ‘Standards and person-making in Eastern Europe: a
tale of two sausages’, in Aihwa Ong & Stephen J. Collier (eds), Global
Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems,
Blackwell, Oxford: 173-193.
Film: Guiyang Beautiful Flavour Barbecue, Granada Centre for Visual
Anthropology, Richard Hughes dir., 2000.
Week 10. Hunger and famine
In 1992 an FAO/WHO study estimated that over 780 million people did not have
enough to eat; the 2010 UNDP Poverty Report estimated that in 2009 the
number was 1.02 billion. Rural populations are most severely affected by the
threat of hunger, but food insecurity in cities is widespread too (Fêo Rodriguez;
Linares). Nor is the problem confined to poor nations. People in the USA are
widely aware of the challenge of hunger in their own society (often highlighted
by issues around government-issued Food Stamps). In the UK the media suggest
that only the homeless go hungry, but in fact with the crisis the numbers turning
to charity foodbanks for help is soaring
(http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/The-Government-must-do-more-tosupport-Food-Banks).
The problem is not a lack of food: world agriculture produces 17 percent more
calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent
population increase (worldhunger.org). How might anthropologists – and
activists, policy makers and scientists – set about disentangling the webs of
structural poverty and powerlessness (Robbins, Baro), the ideologies of unequal
entitlement (Sen, Ries) the impact of war (Richards) or the political fanaticism
(Feuchtwang, Mueggler) that draw the maps of hunger and dependence in the
world today?
Readings for lecture:
Fêo Rodrigues, Isabel P.B. (2008) ‘From silence to silence: the hidden story of a
beef stew in Cape Verde’, Anthropological quarterly 81, 2: 343-76.
Feuchtwang, Stephan (2006) ‘Images of sub-humanity and their realization’,
Critique of Anthropology 26(3): 259 -278.
Richards, Paul (1992) ‘Famine (and war) in Africa: what do anthropologists have
to say?’, Anthropology Today 8(6): 3-5.
Guest lecture: Lisa Arensen
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Week 11: Food sovereignty and virtuous eating
Activism in these arenas has been developing in several interesting ways.
Scientists seeking to solve problems of hunger are increasingly aware of the need
to take social and political context into account (Conway). Consumers, for their
part, have become increasingly aware that they have common cause with
producers in developing healthy or ethical food-chains (Bray, Paxson). Such
coalitions or movements, which are not confined to rich populations in the West
(Klein), can sometimes consolidate into solid long-term networks like Fairtrade
that not only challenge but reshape world food systems (Whatmore & Thorne).
Probably the most significant new movements come from rural smallholders,
challenging conventional development policies and their underlying valuesystems in the name of ‘food sovereignty’. Movements like Via Campesina draw
their vitality from fusing local and transnational agendas, their communities are
both village-based and virtual, their attitudes towards technological and
scientific innovation are both critical and open. In many respects the ways in
which these new social movements formulate their agendas and seek to mobilise
support converge with anthropological understandings of the social and cultural
embeddedness of knowledge, agency and empowerment. It is not surprising,
therefore, that anthropologists and other critical social scientists take a keen and
sympathetic interest in the alternative worlds such movements imagine.
Readings for lecture:
Klein, Jakob A. (2009) ‘Creating ethical food consumers? Promoting organic
foods in urban Southwest China’ Social anthropology 17, 1, special issue
on ‘Anthropology of contemporary China’: 74-89.
McAllister, Carlota (2009) ‘Seeing like an indigenous community: the World
Bank’s Agriculture for Development Report read from the perspective of
postwar rural Guatemala’, Journal of Peasant Studies 36, 3: 645-651.
Martínez-Torres, María Elena and Peter M. Rosset (2010) ‘La Vía Campesina: the
birth and evolution of a transnational social movement’, Journal of
Peasant Studies 37, 1: 149-175.
Film: La Vía Campesina in movement: food sovereignty now! Vía Campesina, 2011
http://vimeo.com/27473286