Blog Posting #6 (due MONDAY 3/19, 11:59 P.M., Comment by Tuesday): Eating 'Reality'

The guiding proposition, sort of 'anthropological': 

From any 'eating / food event,' closely read, we should be able to infer just about anything about a society / culture.

Why?  because of what Latour calls 'networks' or 'hybrids.'  It's all connected: The food. The channels of economics, technology, commerce and so on by which it gets to us. The vastly complex rules on 'cultural practices' like Kosher or Hallal (obvious, explicit ones), or subtle ones like table manners, dating protocols, etiquette, restaurant practices ('Hi, I'm Pam, and I'd like to tell you about our specials...'.)  Food ads. Systems of distribution, pricing, sourcing, manufacturing, marketing. Representations of eating and food in literature, film, TV, visual art. Food stores: the isles, the racks, the displays, the signs, the free samples, the workers--all of it. And finally: our bodies, shaped by culture to crave some things ('go get sliders, anybody?'), and find others gross and disgusting.  

Case in point: that's a LOT of grease on these burgers.  'Yum'?  or 'Oh, ish!'

Sample Case:  In this piece from Culver's webpage, we can watch a vid of Craig Culver (son of the originator) talking to a classic Swede fisherman about cold-water cod — as he breads and fries a fillet. Craig's a big boy, with a comfortable, Midwest manner. He says he comes from a long line of Wisconsin farmers and cheesemakers, and helped his dad invent the Butter Burger. It really couldn't be more pure Mid-West America, and it couldn't argue louder for great, glorious eating excess as a way to express ourselves. Meat: great greasy piles of it. Feels so good. 

Or not?

Going to Culver's, ordering a 'Bacon Deluxe.' Eating it with your family. Reading about Craig and his family; looking at the picture of Craig in his ballcap with the rancher and feeling good. OR:  making fun of Culver's and driving right by, or following a plant-based diet, or asking for the dressing 'on the side' all constitute 'eating / food events.'  

Such events construct us, consolidate our identities. Make us — literally, bodily.  Pierre Bourdieu says our bodies are a sort of fleshy historical record of where we've been. You can 'read' them. And they shout messages about social class, race, gender, everything. Pollan notes that we're largely corn C4 carbon. I would note that we're also oil (which Koch Refinery makes into ammonium nitrate, which farmers knife into their fields).

••• Read an Eating / Food Event.  Show how it constructs 'food' and the culture that supports it.  And us •••

Like what?  Well, obviously things like food advertising. Food in film. Actual food sources (read the Wedge). 'Food porn' — cookbooks, Gourmet, high-end food-tool stores. Restaurants (and what the natives do in them). Your family at table. Food packaging. Eating-disorder clinics.  But also things that may not have an easy 'object' to post — like how meat production companies (Perdue, Hormel) treat immigrant labor (and how The Donald treats immigration). Or Lorenz Meats (Cannon Falls) 'glass abbatoir' (Pollan pp. 226 & 333). Or some little-known facts about actual agricultural practices or economic systems.

1.  Use your expertise; find something that you know or care about. 

2.  Take a position if you want: if it really pisses you off, or if it's an unshakeable 'guilty pleasure,' or you deeply love it, welcome to explore and share why.

3.  Use some of our work to analyse it.  Latour's idea that 'instruments' of all sorts delimit what we can see and talk about.  Or his idea that economic / political forces are part of all production (not just science).  Or any of the Pollan work on the economic / political history of corn.  Or Goodwin on advertising and the creation of things like need, surplus and value.

Have some fun.  Check out 'Colin the Chicken' (Portlandia) HERE (great satire and cultural analysis). OR the obvious fun Pollan has in exploring and telling.  Like that.