Anthropology of Food, Fall 2011

Food anthropologist Sidney Mintz contends that what makes the anthropology of food important is that it constantly connects immediate sensory experience and "inside meanings" to "outside meanings," or the political and economic systems through which food is produced and distributed. Elizabeth Dunn  states that "food is the most important and frequently encountered material object that translates regulatory regimes and power relationships into lived experience...it links the global economy and household economies, political bodies and bodies of individuals, the world and the self" (Dunn 2009). The ways in which food relates to and links both inside and outside meanings guided the students in their individual research projects located below.