Food. It's something anthropologists
are always interested in.
It helps us meet people.
It helps us engage with people.
We sit down and eat a lot of meals
together as a way of learning about others.
In American culture it's also one of those
things we use to differentiate between cultures.
We think about Chinese food,
Indian food, Greek food.
In some ways we imagine food
as just what comes naturally.
But from an anthropological perspective,
we're interested in digging deeper than that.
Food is a very intimate process.
We associate it with family dinners.
We associate it with religious
rituals, with wedding celebrations.
Lots of important events in
our lives focus around food.
Food is also intrinsically related to power.
Who eats and who doesn't?
This is a really important
question for anthropologists.
And by looking more closely at how
food is produced, how it's distributed,
what exactly is available on the
market, even how it's disposed of,
we can begin to see the intricate plays of
power and stratification within the society.
So while we may think of food as
something fun that we do with our friends,
from an anthropological point
of view we're really interested
in seeing what food can tell us about
the internal dynamics of group life,
the power dynamics within groups and between
groups, and how it can offer us new insights
into thinking about humans and human culture.
We analyze food throughout the
book in many different examples.
In the second edition, we've
added a focus on the Happy Meal
at the beginning of the culture chapter.
What can we learn about American
culture from a Happy Meal?
Begin to thinking about how that Happy
Meal is produced, who it's produced by,
how it's eaten and consumed and disposed of.
The Happy Meal gives us a sense of how food is
a global product and how we are all connected
around the world through our food items.
In the global economy chapter we look
at the social life of a chocolate bar
so we can see how the production of
chocolate in West Africa is connected
to consumers all around the world.
We also look at the movement of
workers across national borders.
For instance, agricultural workers
who come to work on the farms
and produce an incredible
bounty for the American table.
And we look at migrant workers.
For instance, Chinese restaurant workers
who deliver your chicken with broccoli
on a daily basis to your dorm
room or to your family's home.
So food we look at from many different
aspects and try to understand its significance
in our daily lives but also how
it reveals global connections.
