Anthropology 365
Food and Culture
ONLINE
Winter 2015
Instructor: Christina W. O’Bryan
Office: Condon 356
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 12:30-1:30 & by appointment.
Email: cwobryan@uoregon.edu
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Unless you are ailing or fasting, you eat every day. Do you eat only to nourish yourself? Is the food you eat a
collection of biochemical substances that sustain your life? Or does eating have social, cultural and symbolic
value? What, if anything, does it mean when you choose not to eat? Does it mean you are sick? Does it
mean that you aren’t hungry? Or does not-eating also have social, cultural and symbolic value? What are
the biological underpinnings of the relationship of human beings to their food? The food we eat serves more
than the biological need to nourish. It is also a part of our social relationships and ideas.
In this course, we will explore both biological and cultural aspects to food and—in particular—how they
interact. For example, what is the role of the human gut in our relation to food? What is the role of culture
to the gut? Are there evolutionary consider
COURSE OBJECTIVES
The primary goal of this course is to support your critical thinking in regard to social, environmental,
symbolic, and evolutionary aspects to human Foodways. I hope that you will become a more critical
consumer not just of the food you eat but of the processes by which it becomes part of your nourishment and
some of the meanings that are attached to how you nourish yourself. By the end of the course, you should
have enough information to appreciate what anthropologists call different “Foodways.” You will also have
the tools to continue exploring in many directions the biological and cultural aspects of food and culture, but
in particular, you will have the tools to:
1. Decipher and deconstruct a meal nutritionally and culturally.
2. Explain the chain of circumstances, environments and people through which the food you eat had to pass
before it could arrive in your mouth.
3. Write a short, biocultural ethnographic account of food which articulates the biocultural relationship of
food to human beings.
4. Explain the biocultural perspective as articulated in this course.
What are your goals and objectives for taking this course (e.g., general education requirements, major field,
food for life, ______, ______)?
ACCOMMODATIONS
If you have documented learning issues like learning disorders or disabilities that affect how you process the
various tasks involved in this course, please let me know at the beginning of the term so that I can make
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appropriate adjustments. Be sure also to document these issues with the Accessible Education office
(http://aec.uoregon.edu/).
REQUIRED READINGS AND OTHER RESOURCES
Required Textbooks:
Nutritional Anthropology: Biocultural Perspectives on Food and Nutrition by Darna Dufour, Alan
Goodman and Gretchen Pelto. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012. (NA)
Food: Ethnographic Encounters edited by Leo Coleman. New York: Berg. (Available as an ebook.)
(FEE)
Other readings will be posted on Blackboard.
Films:
1. Required: Food, Inc. (Available online or you can watch it in Knight Library in video reserve.) If
you have already seen it, be sure you watch the second required film.
2. Required: The Truth about Food, Inc. with filmmaker Robert Kenner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oq24hITFTY.
3. Suggested: Online video series: BBC film series The Future of Food, to be viewed at your
discretion over the first eight weeks. Each video is about 1 hour, so you can divide up the viewings
however you prefer.
Part 1. India http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiPuCSGo_wo
Part 2. Senegal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YDQU7Ts10Q
Part 3. Cuba http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaSd7BkJa1M
GRADING BREAKDOWN
40% discussion board appearance and participation (due every Monday Weeks 2-9).
60 % Term project:
20% Presentation
25% Final Paper
`15 % Evaluations of other presentations
Some written work will be uploaded through SafeAssign, so if you have problems with SafeAssign,
please get help from the Blackboard help desk (541/346-HELP or 541/346-4412).
Discussion Board (40% of your final grade):
In lieu of discussion sections, we will have a weekly discussion board in which we will explore
readings, films and lecture material for 8 weeks (Weeks 2-9).
Term Research Project (60% of your final grade):
For your term project, you will explore an issue relating to food and culture through a small research
project that will include
1) a presentation some time in the last two weeks,
2) a final (1200-2000 word) paper, and
3) your evaluations of the other presentations.
Online Presentations (20% of your final grade): As a class, we will hold our own online “miniconference” on food and culture at the end of the term in which you will teach the rest of us about
your findings and get a little feedback before you finish writing up your research in the final paper.
Presentations provide a useful opportunity to hear your ideas out loud and to get some feedback from
the class that may help improve your final paper. Presentations are also your opportunity to teach
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the rest of your class what you have learned. Instructions will be provided under Research Projects.
Note: I will provide instructions for setting up the online presentations and we will do a very brief
trial run for putting together online presentations early in the term so that you will be well prepared
by the time the presentations have to be submitted.
Final Papers (25% of final grade): These will be expanded written versions of your online
presentations with more detail and more in-depth discussion of your research. Instructions will be
provided under ‘Research Projects.’ Final papers (are due in finals week by MIDNIGHT Thursday
March 19.
Peer Evaluations of Other Presentations (15% of final grade): Students will have an opportunity to
grade and comment on the other presentations. Those grades and comments will be uploaded and
made available to the presenters so that they know where their final papers need a little improvement
(or not!). Instructions will be provided under ‘Research Project.’ Evaluations will be due on Friday
of the week of presentation.
COURSE PROTOCOLS
I want you to speak up in this class--through discussion boards, through emails to me, and in whatever ways
we can find. Passionate—always respectful--disagreement is an important part of learning, so we should
work together to foster a class environment where excited inquiry, when it happens, can take place
respectfully and even kindly. In other words, be polite, treat each other—and me—with respect and kindness
when there is disagreement--even (maybe especially) if you are annoyed or angry. I want you to bring up
disagreements or questions with me; I will always endeavor to answer you well, though I can’t always
promise to give you the answer you want.
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~~~ SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS ~~~
Week 1: Introductions, overview of course, and overview of a few contemporary issues
Readings:
1. In Nutritional Anthropology (NA): The Biocultural Perspective in Nutritional Anthropology, Gretchen
Pelto et. al.
2. In Food: Ethnographic Encounters (FEE): Introduction.
3. On Bb: “Swapping Germs” and related material.
4. Suggested: NA-Browse Appendix A and B AND browse USDA nutrient tables (USDA website
http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ ).
5. Suggested: Read through your syllabus and look over your textbooks and readings so that you can plan
your workload.
Discussion due NEXT week.
Week 2. Evolution, adaptation and brief review of subsistence strategies.
Readings:
1. In NA: Eaton, S. Boyd and Melvin Konner. Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of Its Nature and
Current Implications
2. In NA: Kung Nutritional Status and the Original "Affluent Society"--A New Analysis, Barry Bogin
3. In NA: Body Size, Adaptation and Function, Reynaldo Martorell
4. In FEE: Van Esterik_Revisiting Lao Food
DUE: Discussion 1 due this week.
Week 3. Why Do We Eat What We Eat and What Does It Mean: Nutrition, Greek humors and the
sociobiological contexts of food
Readings:
1. In NA: No Heads, No Feet, No Monkeys, No Dogs: The Evolution of Personal Food Taboos, Miriam
S. Chaiken
2. Norman Kretchmer, Genetic Variability and Lactose Tolerance OR Simoons, F. J. (1978). The
geographic hypothesis and lactose malabsorption. The American journal of digestive diseases,
23(11), 963-980.
3. On Bb: Tapper, Nancy and Richard Tapper. 1985. Eat This, It’ll Do You a Power of Good: Food and
Commensality among Durrani Pashtuns. American Ethnologist.
4. In FEE: Jordan_In Search of the Elusive Heirloom Tomato.
Watch films: Food, Inc. and The Truth about Food, Inc.
DUE: Discussion 2 due this week.
Week 4: Too much/too little, famine/obesity: Food and the Environment
Readings:
1. In NA: Child Malnutrition and Famine in the Nigerien Sahel, Catherine Panter-Brick, Rachel
Casiday, Katherine Hampshire, and Kate Kilpatrick.
2. Bb link: In Counihan and Van Esterik: Want Amid Plenty: from Hunger to Inequality Janet
Poppendieck.
3. On bb: Maxey, Larch. 2006. Can We Sustain Sustainable Agriculture? Learning from Small-Scale
Producer-Suppliers in Canada and the UK. The Geographical Journal 172(3):230-242.
4. In FEE: Dunn_The Food of Sorrow
5. On Bb: Vietnamese market gardens in NOLA
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DUE: Discussion 3 due this week.
Week 5. Colonialism, globalization and the globalization of food and food production.
Readings:
1. On bb: Mintz, Stanley. Time, Sugar and Sweetness.
2. In NA: Coca-Colonization of Diets in The Yucatan, Thomas L. Leatherman and Alan Goodman
3. In NA: Diet and Delocalization: Dietary Changes Since 1750 Gretel H. Pelto and Pertti J. Pelto.
4. In FEE: Harris_The Enchantments of Food in the Lower Amazon.
5. Look over the following websites:
a. National Clonal Germplasm Repository, Corvallis
http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=53-58-15-00
b. University of Illinois Morrow Plots
http://cropsci.illinois.edu/research/morrow
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/07/14/university-illinois-morrow-cornfield
DUE: Discussion 4 due this week.
Week 6. Food and identities
Readings:
1. On bb: Sobal, Jeffrey. 2005. Men, Meat and Marriage: Models of Masculinity. Food and Foodways
13(1/2):1-26.
2. Bb link: In Counihan and Van Esterik: Feeding Lesbigay Families, Christopher Carrington
3. In NA: Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State Apparatus, Anne Alison
4. In FEE: “Keeping out of the Kitchen: Cooking and Power in a Moroccan Household.”
DUE: Discussion 5 due this week.
Week 7. Political economies and food and agriculture.
Readings:
1. Bb link: In Counihan and Van Esterik: The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of Agricultural
Biotechnology, J. Clapp.
2. In FEE: Menely_Food and Morality in Yemen
3. On bb: the view from agribusiness—Harvard Business School Executive Seminars
4. On bb: Hightower excerpt
5. On bb: Stephen, Lynn. Cultural citizenship and farmworkers.
Film in lecture: Harvest of Shame.
DUE: Discussion 6 due this week.
Week 8. Globalization
Readings:
1. On bb: Nonini, Donald M. 2013. The local-food movement and the anthropology of global systems.
American Ethnologist 40(2):265-275.
2. In NA: Anthropological Perspectives on the Global Food Crisis, David A. Himmelgreen, Nancy
Romero-Daza, and Charlotte A. Noble
3. In NA: How Sushi Went Global, Theodore C. Bestor.
4. In FEE: Coleman_Guide to Further Reading.
DUE: Discussion 7 due this week.
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Week 9. Presentations
DUE: Peer evaluations due: Submit your evaluations (comments and grades) by FRIDAY of this week
for the presentations so presenters can have your comments for editing their final papers.
DUE: Discussion 8 due this week.
Week 10. Presentations
DUE: Peer evaluations due: Submit your evaluations (comments and grades) by FRIDAY of this week
for the presentations so presenters can have your comments for editing their final papers.
FINALS Week/Week 11: FINAL PAPER DUE by or before MIDNIGHT, Thursday March 19, 2015.
Submit online through SafeAssign.