Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Social Life of Food

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Food, Social Change and Identity

Part of the book series: Consumption and Public Life ((CUCO))

Abstract

This chapter argues for the importance of incorporating concerns with the materiality of food in anthropologically oriented studies. Historically, the symbolic and communicative dimensions of foods and eating practices have received greater attention than the substantive matter of food and the ways in which it acts upon both the individual and the social body. Rather than approaching food as a passive substance, it is important that we think about the capacities of foods—as active and key elements within broader relational networks—to generate not only biological effects but public and social ones as well. These ideas are developed in the present chapter and illustrated with several examples drawn from the realm of the late pre-Columbian Andes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Alaimo, Stacy, and Susan Hekman. 2008. Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Albornoz, Cristobal de. 1984 [1584]. Instrucción para descubrir todas las guacas del pirú, ed. Pierre Duviols. Revista Andina 2 (1): 169–222.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, Catherine. 1982. Body and Soul in Quechua Thought. Journal of Latin American Lore 8 (2): 179–196.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1988. The Hold Life Has. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. When Pebbles Move Mountains. In Creating Context in Andean Cultures, ed. Rosaleen Howard-Malverde, 73–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998. When Utensils Revolt: Mind, Matter and Modes of Being in the Pre-Columbian Andes. RES 33: 19–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anigbo, Osmund. 1987. Commensality and Human Relationship Among the Igbo. Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Arriaga, Pablo Joseph. 1920 [1621]. La Extirpación de la Idolatría en el Perú. In Colección de Libros y Documentos Referentes a la Historia del Perú, vol. 1. Lima: Sanmarti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkins, Peter. 2009. History of Food Exchanges: A New Agenda. Food and History 7 (1): 111–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avila, Francisco de [1645]. Prefación al Libro de los Sermones o Homilías en la Lengua Castellana, y la Indica General Quechua. In Informaciones acerca de la Religión y Gobierno de los Incas, Colección de Libros y Documentos Referentes a la Historia del Perú, ed. Horacio Urteaga and Carlos Romero, vol. II, 57–89. Lima: Sanmarti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bastien, Joseph. 1978. Mountain of the Condor: Metaphor and Ritual in an Andean Community. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Jane. 2007. Edible Matter. New Left Review 45: 133–145.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bhowmick, Nilanjana. (2013, October 24). How Onions Could Bring Down the Indian Government. Time USA. https://world.time.com/2013/10/24/why-an-onion-crisis-brings-tears-to-indian-eyes

  • Bray, Tamara. 2012. Ritual Commensality Between Human and Non-Human Persons: Investigating Native Ontologies in the Late Pre-Columbian Andean World. eTopoi: Journal of Ancient Studies 2: 197–212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callon, Michel. 1986. Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, ed. John Law, 196–233. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost, eds. 2010. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawdy, Shannon. 2010. A Wild Taste: Food and Colonialism in Eighteenth-century Louisiana. Ethnohistory 57 (3): 389–414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De France, Susan. 2003. Diet and Provisioning in the High Andes: A Spanish Colonial Settlement on the Outskirts of Potosi, Bolivia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7: 99–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dietler, Michael. 2007. Culinary Encounters: Food, Identity, and Colonialism. In We Are What We Eat: Archaeology, Food, and Identity, ed. Katheryn Twiss, 218–242. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fajans, Jane. 1988. The Transformative Value of Food: A Review Essay. Food and Foodways 3: 143–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fontani, G., F. Corradeschi, A. Felici, F. Alfatti, S. Migliorini, and L. Lodi. 2005. Cognitive and Physiological Effects of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Supplementation in Healthy Subjects. European Journal of Clinical Investigation 35 (11): 691–699.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gettleman, Jeffrey, Julfikar Ali Manik, and Suhasini Raj. (2019, October 1.) India Isn’t Letting a Single Onion Leave the Country. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/world/asia/india-modi-onion-prices.html

  • Gifford-Gonzalez, D., and J.U. Sunseri. 2007. Foodways on the Frontier: Animal Exploitation and Identity at an Early Colonial Pueblo in New Mexico. In We Are What We Eat: Archaeology, Food, and Identity, ed. Katheryn Twiss, 260–287. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gose, Peter. 1994. Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. 1936 [1615]. El Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno. Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009 [1615]. The First New Chronicle and Good Government: On the History of the World and the Incas up to 1615. Trans. and Ed. Roland Hamilton. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Herz, Rachel. 1999. Caffeine Effects on Mood and Memory. Behavioral Research Therapy 37 (9): 869–879.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Highfield, Roger. (2014, July 24.) How Your Chili Addiction could be Helping our Live Longer. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/01/us-study-finds-chilli-day-could-stave-old-age-260739.html.

  • India Struggles to Handle Onion Crisis. 2013. Al Jazeera, October 26. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/10/26/india-struggles-to-handle-onion-crisis/.

  • Jackson, Peter. 2013. Food Words: Essays in Culinary Culture. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kurlansky, Mark. 1998. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, Bruno. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latta, Alex. 2014. Matter, Politics and the Sacred: Insurgent Ecologies of Citizenship. Cultural Geographies 21 (3): 323–341.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1969 [1964]. The Raw and the Cooked. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mintz, Sydney. 1996. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mintz, Sidney, and Christine DuBois. 2002. The Anthropology of Food and Eating. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 99–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pendergrast, Mark. 2010. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. Revised ed. New York, NY: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Psarikidou, Katerina, and Bronislaw Szerszynski. 2012. Growing the Social: Alternative Agro-Food Networks and Social Sustainability in the Urban Ethical Foodscape. Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy 1 (8): 30–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quinlan, Paul T., Joan Lane, Karen L. Moore, Jennifer Aspen, Jane A. Rycroft, and Dawn C. O’Brien. 2000. The Acute Physiological and Mood Effects of Tea and Coffee: The Role of Caffeine Level. Pharmacological Biochemical Behavior 66 (1): 19–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weismantel, Mary. 1988. Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whatmore, Sarah. 2006. Material Returns: Practicing a Cultural Geography in and for a More-Than-Human World. Cultural Geographies 13 (4): 600–609.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

    Tamara L. Bray

Authors
  1. Tamara L. Bray
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tamara L. Bray .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Cynthia Chou

  2. Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Susanne Kerner

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bray, T.L. (2021). The Social Life of Food. In: Chou, C., Kerner, S. (eds) Food, Social Change and Identity . Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84371-7_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84371-7_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-84370-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-84371-7

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation