food and culture The classic book that hel.docx

food and
culture
The classic book that helped to defi ne and legitimize the fi eld
of food and culture
studies is now available, with major revisions, in an affordable
e-book version (978-0-
203-07975-1).
The third edition includes forty original essays and reprints
of previously published
classics under fi ve Sections: Foundations; Hegemony and
Difference; Consumption
and Embodiment; Food and Globalization ; and Challenging,
Contesting, and
Transforming the Food System.
Seventeen of the forty chapters included are either new to this
edition, rewritten by
their original authors, or edited by Counihan and Van Esterik.
A bank of test items applicable to each article in the book is
available to instructors
interested in selecting this edition for course use. Simply send
an email to the pub-
lisher at [email protected]
Carole Counihan is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at
Millersville University in
Pennsylvania and editor-in-chief of Food and Foodways . Her
earlier books include

Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in
Twentieth-Century Florence ,
Food in the USA , and The Anthropology of Food and Body:
Gender, Meaning, and
Power .
Penny Van Esterik is Professor of Anthropology at York
University in Toronto,
Canada, where she teaches nutritional anthropology, in addition
to doing research on
food and globalization in Southeast Asia. She is a founding
member of WABA (World
Alliance for Breastfeeding Action) and writes on infant and
young child feeding,
including her earlier book, Beyond the Breast-Bottle
Controversy .
food and
culture
a reader
third edition
edited by
carole counihan and
penny van esterik

First published 2013
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without
intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Food and culture : a reader / edited by Carole Counihan and
Penny Van Esterik. – 3rd ed.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Food–Social aspects. 2. Food habits. I. Counihan, Carole,
1948- II. Van Esterik, Penny.
GT2850.F64 2012
394.1'2–dc23 2012021989
ISBN: 978-0-415-52103-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-52104-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-07975-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Minion
by Cenveo Publisher Services, Bangalore
Contents
Foreword from The Gastronomical Me , M.F.K. Fisher xi
Preface to the Third Edition xii
Acknowledgments xiii
Why Food? Why Culture? Why Now? Introduction to the Third
Edition 1
Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik
Foundations
1. Why Do We Overeat? 19
Margaret Mead
This piece questions attitudes towards food and eating in a
world
where food is overabundant and we face the ambiguity of
overindulgence and guilt.

2. Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food
Consumption 23
Roland Barthes
Barthes explains how food acts as a system of communication
and provides a body of images that mark eating situations.
3. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste 31
Pierre Bourdieu (tr. Richard Nice)
Bourdieu addresses differences between taste of luxury and
taste
of necessity through his theory of class distinction.
4. The Culinary Triangle 40
Claude Lévi-Strauss
This classic structuralist statement, often critiqued, shows how
food
preparation can be analyzed as a triangular semantic fi eld,
much like
language.
5. The Abominations of Leviticus 48
Mary Douglas
Douglas applies structural analysis to the establishment of
Jewish
dietary rules as a means to develop self-control, distinction, and
a sense
of belonging based on the construction of holiness.
vi Contents

6. The Abominable Pig 59
Marvin Harris
Materialists like Harris reject symbolic and structuralist
explanations and
explain food prohibitions based on economic and ecological
utility.
7. Industrial Food: Towards the Development of a World
Cuisine 72
Jack Goody
The early industrialization of food processing was made
possible by
advancements in preservation, mechanization, marketing, and
transport of food items. These advances also separated urban
and rural
societies from food manufacturing.
8. Time, Sugar, and Sweetness 91
Sidney W. Mintz
Colonialism made high-status sugar produced in the Caribbean
into a working class staple.
Hegemony and Difference: Race, Class, and Gender
9. More than Just the “Big Piece of Chicken”: The Power of
Race,
Class, and Food in American Consciousness 107
Psyche Williams-Forson
Ethnographic, historical, and literary research reveals not only
controlling and damaging stereotypes about African Americans
and
chicken but also the ways Black women have used chicken as a

form of
resistance and community survival.
10. The Overcooked and Underdone: Masculinities in
Japanese Food Programming 119
T.J.M. Holden
Cooking shows featuring male chefs predominate on Japanese
television and propagate one-dimensional defi nitions of
masculinity
based on power, authority, and ownership of consumer
commodities.
11. Domestic Divo? Televised Treatments of Masculinity,
Femininity,
and Food 137
Rebecca Swenson
The programs of The Food Network manifest gender
stereotypes
while also providing an avenue for challenging ideas of male
and
female roles regarding food.
12. Japanese Mothers and Obento-s: The Lunch-Box as
Ideological
State Apparatus 154
Anne Allison
Japanese mothers, in preparing elaborate lunch-boxes for their
preschool children, reproduce state ideologies of power.
Contents vii

13. Mexicanas’ Food Voice and Differential Consciousness
in the San Luis Valley of Colorado 173
Carole Counihan
Food-centered life histories portray the voices and perspectives
of traditionally muted Hispanic women of rural southern
Colorado
whose food stories reveal differential behaviors and
consciousness
which promote empowerment.
14. Feeding Lesbigay Families 187
Christopher Carrington
Because feeding work is complex, laborious, and highly
gendered,
it is problematic in lesbigay families because a full accounting
of it
would destroy illusions of equality and call into question
masculinity
of gay men who do it and femininity of lesbians who do not.
15. Thinking Race Through Corporeal Feminist Theory:
Divisions and
Intimacies at the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market 211
Rachel Slocum
By applying feminist materialist theory, Slocum analyses the
embodiment of race and its manifestations through food
practices
and behavior displayed at the farmers’ market.
16. The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine 231
Dylan Clark
Punk cuisine — based on scavenged, rotten, and/or stolen

food — challenges the hierarchy, commodifi cation, toxicity,
and
environmental destruction of the capitalist food system.
Consumption and Embodiment
17. Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Signifi cance of Food
to
Medieval Women 245
Caroline Walker Bynum
Medieval women used food for personal religious expression,
including giving food away, exuding foods from their bodies,
and undertaking fasts to gain religious and cultural power.
18. Not Just “a White Girl’s Thing”: The Changing Face of
Food and
Body Image Problems 265
Susan Bordo
Bordo argues that eating disorders and body image issues are
created through social and media pressures that target all
women regardless of race or class.
19. De-medicalizing Anorexia: Opening a New Dialogue 276
Richard A. O’Connor
This paper offers a biocultural approach to anorexia that
stresses how young
people obsess not over beauty but over an ascetic search for
self-control.
viii Contents

20. Feeding Hard Bodies: Food and Masculinities in Men’s
Fitness
Magazines 284
Fabio Parasecoli
Men’s fi tness magazines defi ne masculinity through
discussions of food
and body, increasingly involving men in concerns about
constructing
corporeal perfection and regulating consumption to build
muscle and
strength.
21. Cooking Skills, the Senses, and Memory: The Fate of
Practical Knowledge 299
David Sutton
Practical knowledge of food preparation is an embodied skill
that
uses all the senses. Standardization of modern food practices
affects
the social dimensions of this type of experiential learning.
22. Not “From Scratch”: Thai Food Systems and “Public
Eating” 320
Gisèle Yasmeen
The urban phenomenon of public eating in Thailand is a refl
ection
of changes in gender, labor, and household dynamics in a
(post)industrial food system.
23. Rooting Out the Causes of Disease: Why Diabetes is So
Common Among Desert Dwellers 330
Gary Paul Nabhan

Skyrocketing type two diabetes among desert dwelling Seri
Indians of
Northern Mexico suggests that changes in diet have caused this
major health problem and that traditional desert foods —
especially
legumes, cacti, and acorns — are protective.
24. Between Obesity and Hunger: The Capitalist Food Industry
342
Robert Albritton
Political economists identify how the industrial food system
manipulates the price of commodity goods in order to shape the
diet of Americans. This global capitalist food system with its
cheap
and addictive foods promotes both hunger and obesity.
Food and Globalization
25. “As Mother Made It”: The Cosmopolitan Indian Family,
“Authentic” Food, and the Construction of Cultural Utopia 355
Tulasi Srinivas
This chapter examines the growing consumption of packaged
foods
by middle-class South-Asian Indians in Bangalore and Boston
and focuses
on the relationship between authenticity, meanings of
motherhood, and
defi nitions of the family.
26. “Real Belizean Food”: Building Local Identity in the
Transnational
Caribbean 376
Richard Wilk

Contents ix
Transformations in Belizean food from colonial times to the
present
demonstrate transnational political, economic, and culinary
infl uences that have affected the ways Belizean people defi ne
themselves and their nation.
27. Let’s Cook Thai: Recipes for Colonialism 394
Lisa Heldke
Cultural food colonialism is reproduced by food adventurers
who seek out ethnic foods to satisfy their taste for the exotic
other.
28. Slow Food and the Politics of “Virtuous Globalization”
409
Alison Leitch
This chapter provides a brief history of the Slow Food
movement’s politics and controversies.
29. Taco Bell, Maseca, and Slow Food: A Postmodern
Apocalypse
for Mexico’s Peasant Cuisine? 426
Jeffrey M. Pilcher
The case of Mexico highlights challenges to the program of
Italy’s
Slow Food Movement which offers strategies for the
maintenance of
traditional, local, and sustainable Mexican food but which does
not

address problems of class and food access.
30. Food Workers as Individual Agents of Culinary
Globalization:
Pizza and Pizzaioli in Japan 437
Rossella Ceccarini
This chapter examines globalization of food through a case
study
of pizza in Japan through the transnational experiences of
Japanese and Italian pizza chefs.
31. Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald’s
in Beijing 449
Yungxiang Yan
In Beijing, Chinese consumers localize fast food by linking it
to being
American and being modern. They enjoy the standardization of
meals, the hospitable service, the democratic environment, and
the
cleanliness, which create a desirable space to socialize and
linger.
32. On the Move for Food: Three Women Behind the Tomato’s
Journey 472
Deborah Barndt
The neoliberal model of production has contributed to the
feminization of labor
and poverty as told through the stories of two Mexican and one
Canadian
worker forced to adapt to the fl exibility of labor in the global
food system.
Challenging, Contesting, and Transforming the Food System

33. The Chain Never Stops 485
Eric Schlosser
The mistreatment of meatpacking workers in the United States
is linked to the
high rates of trauma in this dangerous industry and reveals
general problems
of corporate food production.
x Contents
34. Fast Food/Organic Food: Refl exive Tastes and the Making
of
“Yuppie Chow” 496
Julie Guthman
This chapter examines salad greens to study the development of
modern
organic food production, its roots in the counter culture
movement of the
1960s, and its transformation into a gentrifi ed commodity
reserved for a
privileged niche market.
35. The Politics of Breastfeeding: An Advocacy Update 510
Penny Van Esterik
The commodifi cation of baby food has had severe
consequences,
but advocacy groups actively resist the promotional tactics of
transnational food and pharmaceutical companies.
36. The Political Economy of Food Aid in an Era of

Agricultural
Biotechnology 531
Jennifer Clapp
The advent of genetically modifi ed organisms (GMOs) has
seriously
affected food aid, even in the context of famine and extreme
hunger.
37. The Political Economy of Obesity: The Fat Pay All 546
Alice Julier
The culture-wide denigration of the “obesity epidemic” is due
not only
to its health consequences, but also to the political and
economic
benefi ts to the food corporations, the diet industry, and the
health professions.
38. Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger to Inequality 563
Janet Poppendieck
Because of great need, many US volunteers feed the hungry,
but
charity not only fails to solve the underlying causes of hunger
— poverty
and inequality — but contributes to it by offering token rather
than
structural solutions and taking the government off the hook.
39. Community Food Security “For Us, By Us”: The Nation of
Islam and the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church 572
Priscilla McCutcheon
McCutcheon looks at Black Nationalist religious organizations
that

aim to achieve racial self-reliance through community food
movements.
40. Learning Democracy Through Food Justice Movements
587
Charles Z. Levkoe
The modern detachment of people from their food sources has
fostered a
surge of community involvement in the food movement.
Through
engagement in food justice organizations the public is
relearning
democratic citizenship and empathy for activism.
Contributors 602
Credit Lines 609
Index 614
Foreword
People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and
drinking? Why don’t you
write about the struggle for power and security, and about love,
the way others do?
They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful
to the honor of my
craft.
The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am
hungry. But there is
more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for
food and security and

love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot
straightly think of one
without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I
am really writing
about love and the hunger for it . . . and warmth and richness
and fi ne reality of
hunger satisfi ed . . . and it is all one.
I tell about myself, and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or
drank red wine in a
room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it
that I am telling too
about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for
love and happiness.
There is food in the bowl, and more often than not, because of
what honesty I have,
there is nourishment in the heart, to feed the wilder, more
insistent hungers. We must
eat. If, in the face of that dread fact, we can fi nd other
nourishment, and tolerance and
compassion for it, we’ll be no less full of human dignity.
There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is
broken and wine
drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you
write about hunger,
and not wars or love?
M. F. K. Fisher
The Gastronomical Me,
originally published 1943

Preface to the Third Edition
In this third edition of Food and Culture: A Reader , our aim
mirrors that of the previ-
ous two editions: to provide a comprehensive introduction to the
fi eld that contains
classic foundational pieces, a range of outstanding articles refl
ecting diverse perspec-
tives and topics, and cutting edge new work. This task has
become more challenging
with each edition as the fi eld has exploded over the sixteen
years since the fi rst edition
appeared in 1997. To include new work and keep the Reader
current and lively, we
had to omit some pieces that we love, but we hope that the new
articles will excite our
readers and more than make up for what we dropped.
In this new edition, we have kept almost all of the foundational
pieces but cut the
article by De Certeau and Giard to include a selection from
Pierre Bourdieu. We have
modifi ed the section on food consumption and the body by
reducing the number of
articles on anorexia nervosa, expanding the focus on obesity,
and including more
diverse approaches to the body. This edition of the Reader
maintains a broad
geographical and multicultural coverage with articles on Euro-
Americans, African
Americans, and Latinos as well as on Japanese, Greek, Italian,
Thai, South Asian,
native American, Mexican, and Chinese food cultures. It
continues to explore endur-
ing topics of food and gender, consumption and meaning,
globalization, and political

economy, but introduces new topics with articles on farmers’
markets, community
food security, the complexities of the organic food market,
democracy and food jus-
tice, cooking skill and its meanings, gender in food television,
and packaged foods in
the South Asian diaspora.
Since the fi rst edition of the book, we have been privileged to
participate in the
creation of the sumptuous covers. From the multihued noodles
and fruit of the fi rst
edition, to the sensuous chocolate dessert and colorful spices of
the second, we have
endeavored to combine foods like fi sh and tomatoes with
culturally constructed
products like sandwiches. We chose the Thai fruit and vegetable
carving for this edi-
tion’s cover to underscore the skill and effort involved in
transforming foods into
edible works of art, and the important place of the visual
aspects of food in the anthro-
pology of the senses.
We are pleased to publish this third edition not only in standard
book format but
also as an electronic book. For instructors who adopt the book
in courses, we have
also prepared test questions which are available on the book’s
website. We have tried
to pay more attention to temporal context in this edition, giving
the original date of
publication at the beginning of each article, to draw more
attention to the scholarly
context in which these papers were written.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank many colleagues who provided
feedback on the book, both
those who chatted with us informally and those who provided
formal reviews for
Routledge.
Jonathan Maupin, Arizona State University
Mary Malainey, Brandon University
Janet Alexanian, California State University, Fullerton
Julie Fairbanks, Coe College
Amy Speier, Eckerd College
Thierry Rigogne, Fordham University
Ari Ariel, New York University
Susan C. Rogers, New York University
Susan Cooper, Roosevelt University
Claudia Chang, Sweet Briar College
Sharyn Jones, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Don Pollock, University of Buffalo
J.D. Baker, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Judy Rodriguez, University of North Florida
Frayda Cohen, University of Pittsburgh
Ann Reed, University of Akron
We thank the Boston University Gastronomy MLA students in
Carole’s Food Anthro-
pology class in spring semester 2012 who wrote reviews of
many articles which helped
us narrow our selection for this book: Mayling Chung, Aubee
Duplesss, Monet Dyer,
Jennifer French, Susie Helm, Brad Jones, Joyce Liao, Emily
Olson, Katie Peterson,
Erin Powell, Jessica Roat, Allison Schultz, Natalie Shmulik,

Penny Skalnik, Shannon
Streets, Kaylee Vickers, Rachel Wegman, and Chao-Hui (Amy)
Young. We express
eternal gratitude to Boston University Gastronomy MLA student
Alexandre
Galimberti for serving as editorial assistant on the project with
effi ciency and
equanimity. We would also like to thank our Routledge editor,
Steve Rutter, for his
good publishing sense and his unbelievable deadlines, Fred
Courtright for help with
permissions, Tom Hussey for the cover design, and Samantha
Barbaro and Leah
Babb-Rosenfeld for their editorial assistance.
Carole would like to thank the Millersville University
Sociology-Anthropology
Department and Faculty Grants Committee for years of support;
the Boston Univer-
sity MLA Gastronomy program and Rachel Black, its
coordinator; the University of
xiv Acknowledgments
Gastronomic Sciences students, faculty and administration for
providing the oppor-
tunity to teach food anthropology in an international setting for
the past eight won-
derful years; and the University of Cagliari Visiting Professor
program and colleagues
Gabriella Da Re, Giovanna Caltagirone, Alessandra Guigoni,
and many others. She
would also like to thank her patient, smart, supportive husband,
Jim Taggart, who has

put up with more food anthropology than he ever dreamed of,
and her children for
their continuing ability to amaze her.
Penny would like to thank Vivian Khouw, Anne Meneley, Paul
Antze, and Megan
Davies for sharing their resources and experiences teaching
about food, and suggest-
ing readings that students enjoy, as well as her husband, John,
whose hands and eyes
greatly facilitated this project. Penny’s efforts on the reader are
dedicated to her late
mentor, Dr. Michael Latham, founding director of International
Nutrition at Cornell,
who embodied lasting lessons about how to combine academic
integrity with activist
social justice around the subject of food and hunger.
Why Food? Why Culture? Why Now?
Introduction to the Third Edition
Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik
In 1997, when we proposed the fi rst Food and Culture
Reader , we had to persuade
Routledge of the importance of publishing it. In 2012,
Routledge had to persuade us
to undertake the arduous task of reviewing the incredibly
expanded literature to
produce a third edition. We hope that the current selection of
articles gives a snapshot
of how the fi eld has grown and developed from its early
foundations. Cultural
anthropology remains the central discipline guiding this fi eld.

Food and nutritional
anthropology in particular, and food studies generally, manage
to rise above the
dualisms that threaten to segment most fi elds of study. This fi
eld resists separating
biological from cultural, individual from society, and local from
global culture, but
rather struggles with their entanglements. Food and culture
studies have somehow
made interdisciplinarity workable. Sometimes co-opting, more
often embracing the
history and geography of food as part of the holistic emphasis
of anthropology, food
studies have become increasingly sophisticated theoretically.
We hope these papers
reveal the roots of contemporary issues in food studies, and we
acknowledge our bias
towards particular subjects that most engage our interest.
Scholarship in food studies has expanded remarkably over the
past decade. A quick
and by no means exhaustive bibliographic search turns up
scores of recent food
books in fi elds as diverse as philosophy (Heldke 2003 , Kaplan
2012 , Korsmeyer
2002 ), psychology (Conner and Armitage 2002 , Ogden 2010
), geography (Carney
2001, 2010, Friedberg 2009 , Guthman 2011 , Yasmeen 2006
), fi lm studies (Bower
2004 , Ferry 2003 , Keller 2006 ) 1 , and architecture
(Franck 2003 , Horwitz and Singley
2006 ), not to mention the vast literature in food’s traditional fi
elds of nutrition, home
economics, and agriculture. Countless new texts abound on food
in literature—from
the study of eating and being eaten in children’s literature

(Daniel 2006 ) to food sym-
bols in early modern American fi ction (Appelbaum 2006 ) and
classical Arab literature
(Van Gelder 2000 ), to post-Freudian analysis of literary
orality (Skubal 2002 ).
In its more longstanding disciplinary homes, food continues to
fascinate, so we
fi nd texts exploring the history of food from the Renaissance
banquet (Albala 2007a )
through the broad sweep of time (Clafl in and Scholliers 2012 ,
Parasecoli and
Scholliers 2012 ) to the future of food (Belasco 2006 ); from
the United States
(Williams-Forson 2006 ) to Italy (Capatti and Montanari 2003
, Montanari 2010 ) and
all of Europe (Flandrin and Montanari 1999); to the history of
many specifi c foods
including tomatoes (Gentilcore 2010 ), beans (Albala 2007b ),
turkey (Smith 2006 ),
2 Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik
chocolate (Coe and Coe 2000 ), salt (Kurlansky 2003 ), and
spices (Turner 2004 ).
Sociologists have not hesitated to stir the food studies pot (Ray
2004 ), and anthro-
pologists have continued to produce work on topics as varied as
hunger in Africa
(Flynn 2005), children’s eating in China (Jing 2000 ), the
global trade in lamb fl aps
(Gewertz and Errington 2010 ), food and memory in Greece
(Sutton 2001 ), the glo-
balization of milk (Wiley 2010 ), Japan’s largest fi sh market

(Bestor 2004 ), the culture
of restaurants (Beriss and Sutton 2007 ), and the role of
cooking in human evolution
(Wrangham 2010).
These examples provide some measure of the many texts that
have been published
in the last decade. Why has the fi eld exploded so? We would
like to suggest several
reasons for this explosion. Without a doubt, feminism and
women’s studies have
contributed to the growth of food studies by legitimizing a
domain of human
behavior so heavily associated with women over time and across
cultures. A second
reason is the politicization of food and the expansion of social
movements linked to
food. This has created an increased awareness of the links
between consumption
and production, beginning with books on food and agriculture
(e.g. Guthman 2004 ,
Magdoff et al. 2000 ) as well as more interdisciplinary work on
food politics (Guthman
2011 , Nestle 2003 , Patel 2007 , Williams-Forson and
Counihan 2012 ). A third reason
is that once food became a legitimate topic of scholarly
research, its novelty, richness,
and scope provided limitless grist for the scholarly mill, as food
links body and
soul, self and other, the personal and the political, the material
and the symbolic.
Moreover, as food shifts from being local and known, to being
global and unknown,
it has been transformed into a potential symbol of fear and
anxiety (Ferrieres 2005 ),
as well as of morality (Pojman 2011 , Singer and Mason 2006 ,

Telfer 2005 ).
Scholars have found food a powerful lens of analysis and
written insightful
books about a range of compelling contemporary issues:
diaspora and immigration
(Gabaccia 1998 , Ray 2004 , Ray and Srinivas 2012 );
nationalism, globalization, and
local manifestations (Barndt 1999 , Inglis and Gimlin 2010 ,
Wilk 2006a , 2006b);
culinary tourism (Long 2003 ); gender and race-ethnic identity
(Abarca 2006,
Williams-Forson 2006 ); social justice and human rights (Kent
2007 , Wenche Barth
and Kracht 2005 ) 2 ; modernization and dietary change
(Counihan 2004 , Watson
1997 ); food safety and contamination (Friedberg 2004, 2009,
Nestle 2004 , Schwartz
2004 ); and taste perception (Howes 2005 , Korsmeyer 2002 ,
2005). Many of these
subjects have important material dimensions, which have also
been studied by
archaeologists, folklorists, and even designers, as food leaves
its mark on the human
environment.
The explosion of the fi eld of food studies is also refl ected in
new and continuing
interdisciplinary journals such as Agriculture and Human Valu
es, Appetite , Culture
and Agriculture , The Digest , Food and Foodways , Food,
Culture and Society ,
Gastronomica , The Anthropology of Food , and Nutritional
Anthropology . Hundreds of
websites inform food professionals, researchers, and the general
public. Ground-

breaking documentary fi lms such as Fast Food Nation , The
Garden , Supersize Me ,
The Future of Food , The Real Dirt on Farmer John , King
Corn , Farmageddon , and Two
Angry Moms have called attention to problems in our food
system and efforts to
redress them. Food advocacy is refl ected in food movements …
S U S A N J . T E R R I O / G E O R G E T O W N U N I V E
R S I T Y
Craftinn 6rwl Crl Chocolates in
C'est un magasin oh le chocolat figne en m i e , trait6 par un
mattre. C'est du travail cent pour cent artisanal au sens "artist"
du terme, qui sait tirer de la sublime fhve d'Am6rique la
substantifiqu e splendeur.
-L.e guide des croqueurs de chomlat, 1988
I NOTED THE DISPLAY of Parisian master chocolatier
Michel Chaudun in the window of his seventh arrondisse-
ment confectionery boutique when I arrived to interview
him in late October 1990. It featured the lush tropical flora,
tools, and raw materials associated with third-world ca-
cao harvests. A framed text above assured customers that
"notre chocolat provient des plus grands c m de cacaos
du monde" (our chocolate comes from the best cacao
bean growths in the world). Next to this was a basin of
liquid dark chocolate, specialized handicraft tools, and Le
eaters) listing the "170 best chocolatiers of France," in-
cluding Michel Chaudun. A photocopy of the guide page
devoted to Michel Chaudun revealed that his chocolates

rated an 18 out of 20 (see Figure 1).
Michel Chaudun greeted me at the door and ushered
me into his tiny, elegant boutique. Inside, dark chocolate
candies with evocative names like Esmeralda and Vkra-
gua were invitingly displayed on an open central island. A
small hand-printed sign indicated the price per kilo: 340F,
or roughly $68. A stunning array of confectionery art, from
baby bottles to life-size animals, was shelved alongside
porcelain and crystal figurines, next to chic confectionery
gift boxes (see Figure 2). The boutique d k o r combined
neutral earthen tones and rich woods with an abundant
use of mirrors. Through a door separating the boutique
from the adjacent workshop a young craftsman,
Chaudun's only full-time worker and former apprentice,
guide des croqueuTs de chocolat (The guide of chocolate
SUSAN J. TERRIO is Assistant Professor, Department of
French, Georgetown
University, Washington, DC 20057.
could be seen preparing a batch of house specialities.
Next to him were newly coated rows of glossy, ebony-
black chocolate bonbons. The intoxicating aroma of
chocolate permeated the boutique whenever the work-
shop door opened.
Along its complex trajectory from cultivation and
harvest in the third world to processing and consumption
in the first world, chocolate is transformed and differen-
tiated into many culturally relevant categories of food. In
France these include breakfast breads, snacks, drink
mixes, dessert cuisine, specialty candies which are sold
as gifts, for personal consumption, and for ranking in
connoisseur tastings, and finally, confectionery art.

In the 1980s Belgian producers of chocolate candies
made a swift and successful incursion into the French
market by specifically targeting the specialized niche
Figure 1
Michel Chaudun window display. Photo by Susan J. Terrio.
American Anthropologist 98(1):67-79. Copyright 0 1996,
American Anthropological Association.
6 8 A M E R I C A N A N T H R O P O L O G I S T V O L .
9 8 , N o . 1 M A R C H 1 9 9 6
Figure 2
Chaudun boutique interior. Photo by Susan J. Terrio.
dominated until then by French artisanal chocolatiers.
Over the same period, European Community (EC) repre-
sentatives prepared for the Maastricht Treaty by propos-
ing a set of European norms of chocolate production
which threatened to undercut existing French legislation.
Facing the intensified international competition of the
1980s and heightened fears of increasingly centralized
regulation, French chocolatiers and cultural taste makers
attempted to stimulate new demand for craft commodi-
ties by promoting "genuine," "grand cru," or "vintage"
French chocolate.2 Despite the publication of a plethora
of works on the logic of consumption in late capitalist
societies and a recent volume on the increasing demand
for culturally authentic, handicraft goods from developing
nations among first-world consumers, little is known
about the economic and sociocultural dimensions of craft
commodity production in advanced ~apitalism.~ Few

studies have examined the complex process whereby
craft objects are culturally marked and endowed with
social, aesthetic, and economic value as they are pro-
duced, exchanged, and consumed in postindustrial cen-
ters.
The exploration of the relationship between the
elaboration of chocolate as a cultural commodity and the
affirmation of national identity is important to consider in
the wake of EC unification. The 1992 ratification of the
Maastricht Treaty by a slim margin of French voters and
the hostility it continues to generate among many British
people are only two examples of the ambivalence engen-
dered by the creation of a unified Europe. One of the
strategies chosen by EC bureaucrats to forge a closer
union among factious member nations has been to create
a pan-nationalism grounded in a common European cul-
ture and shared cultural symbols (Shore and Black 1992).
Attempts in Brussels to build and impose a universal
European culture threatened to undermine a notion of
French culture defined in identical terms. A universalist
notion of civilization still survives in France and is
strongly linked to the view that French culture itself best
embodies it (Rigby 1991). Many French people see their
achievements in literature, philosophy, and the arts, both
high and popular, as evidence of this. Moreover, the
French state and its representatives take seriously the
protection of their language and cultural forms from in-
trusive foreign influences. Current debates on the ubiqui-
tous spread of English and the effect of European norms
on traditional foods such as cheese illustrate this. Thus,
even as France asserts her diplomatic, political, and eco-
nomic presence in the "new" Europe, the arena of culture
remains highly charged and contested.

On the eve of 1993, French chocolatiers and taste
makers responded to repeated calls for European uni-
formity in various areas by invoking the uniqueness of
their cultural products as exempmed in the specifically
French "art" of chocolate making. This art was grounded
in superior aesthetic standards and in the preeminence of
French culinary arts and skilled artisanship, both con-
stituent elements and potent emblems of French culture.
Thus French chocolate, one of the commodities that con-
note the value of traditional craft production and the
prestige of haute cuisine, provides a means of investigat-
ing the production of taste and its relation to key elements
at the core of contemporary French culture.
Artisanal Chocolate Production: The Past as
Present
It is perhaps wise to begin with a description of
contemporary chocolate businesses and a brief discus-
sion of the evolution of both the craft and French patterns
of confectionery consumption. Despite a continuous re-
structuring of the craft since chocolate was introduced to
France in the late 16th century, the arrival of Belgian
chocolate franchise outlets in France in the 1980s was
C R A F T I N G C H O C O L A T E S I N F R A N C E /
SUSAN J . T E R R I O 69
reported as a unique event. It served as an important
catalyst in the creative reinvention of chocolate candies
as prestige cultural commodities. The organization of ar-
tisanal chocolate businesses like Chaudun's reveals the
continuing salience of certain "traditional" work and so-

cial forms such as skilled craft production and inde-
pendent entrepreneurship. Family members, both blood
relations and in-laws, control daily business operations,
which usually include two complementary and mutually
reinforcing activities: sales and production. These busi-
nesses also adhere to a strictly gendered division of labor
according to which men generally produce goods in the
private space of the workshop and women sell them in the
public sphere of the aaacent boutique. Skill is transmitted
largely through experiential training and work is organ-
ized hierarchically, according to skill and experience,
under the authority of the craftsman-owner in the work-
shop and his wife in the boutique.
Through their window m l a y s and boutique inte-
riors, French chocolatiers actively capitalize on the endur-
ing association between contemporary artisanal produc-
tion and the idealized, aestheticized image of a
"traditional," premodern France: This image evokes a
"simpler," "better" time when family workshops provided
the exclusive context within which a solidaristic commu-
nity of uniformly skilled masters guaranteed the produc-
tion of quality goods. French masters like Chaudun cele-
brate contemporary craftsmanship while linking it to a
rich past of preindustrial guild traditions. Chaudun's
elaborate pieces of confectionery art (see Figure 3) recall
the masterpieces (chefs d'oeuvre) completed as a neces-
sary rite of passage in French craft guilds and journeymen
brotherhood associations (compugnmnage) (Coornaert
1966; Sewell 1980). The small size of Chaudun's boutique
evokes the traditional artisanal shop and its place in a
distinctively French national tradition of smallscale, skill-
based family modes of entrepreneurship. The display of
raw materials and artisanal tools reinforces, for the con-
sumers' benefit, the human labor embodied in the goods.
House candies are handmade on the premises by Michel

Chaudun. The creation and prominent public presenta-
tion of individually named candies, as well as the culinary
guide rating his chocolates, invoke a renowned French
gastronomic heritage based on taste and aesthetics.
Chaudun is not only a master craftsman but also a master
chef.
At the same time, Chaudun's business is a testament
to the changes that have transformed the craft of artisanal
chocolate production. Progressive mechanization over
the course of the 19th and 20th centuries provoked a
two-stage restructuring of the craft. Initially, small- and
medium-sized family chocolatiers who mechanized their
workshops displaced craftsmen manually producing
chocolate from cacao beans. These small-scale family
producers were in turn definitively displaced by large-
scale industrial manufacturers. By the 1950s the skills
associated with the production of chocolate from cacao
beans had shifted entirely to industrialized mass produc-
tion. The craft of chocolate production was redefined and
its skills came to center exclusively on the fabrication of
dipped chocolate candies, molded chocolate figurines
and, most recently, confectionery art. Currently, artisanal
chocolatiers occupy a specialized niche within a fully
industrialized sector; they purchase industrially manufac-
tured blocks of chocolate and transform them into a
personalized line of goods5
In France, chocolate candies are purchased primarily
as and distributed to relatives, friends, and col-
leagues at significant social occasions. The purchase of
artisanal candies is embedded within stylized gifting rela-
tions and remains closely linked to seasonal and ceremo-
nial occasions such as private rite-of-passage observances

~ Figure3
This lamp, crafted from chocolateand sugar,wonfirstplace ina
national
contest held i n Paris, 1990. Photo by Susan J. Terrio.
9 8 , N o . 1 M A R C H 1 9 9 6
and religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Until
quite recently, French customers of family confectionery
businesses purchased equal numbers of dark and milk
chocolate candies as g&s, chose from fewer house speci-
alities, saw virtually no confectionery art, and had no
specialized culinary guides with which to rate the best
French chocolates. A series of developments in the 1980s
coalesced to effect considerable change.
During the 1970s and 198Os, competition increased
and patterns of confectionery consumption changed. The
purchase of artisanally produced candies for distribution
as g&s increased modestly in the 1970s but stagnated at
virtually the same level in the 1980s (Casella 1989). In
contrast, the sale of mass-produced chocolate products
registered a sigmficant increase. Over the Same period,
foreign multinationals, including the American (Mars)
and the Swiss (Lindt) companies, came to dominate the
French market for mass-produced chocolate products.
In addition, from the early 1980s on, Belgian fran-
chise outlets specifically targeted the market for confec-
tionery gifts by selling mass-produced chocolate candies
in store fronts that closely resembled French artisanal
boutiques6 Belgian chocolates retailed for one-half to
one-third the price of French artisanal candies and be-

tween 1983 and 1990 captured 48 percent of the confec-
tionery a t market (Mathieu 1990). The success of the
Belgians touched a raw nerve among French chocolatiers
and cultural taste makers.7 Belgian firms appropriated the
presentational forms of French chocolates (sold in ele-
gant confectionery boutiques), their cultural value to con-
sumers (hnked to gifting relations and ceremonial con-
sumption), and specialized French trade terms (used to
distinguish among types of candies and to assign evoca-
tive names to them).' Mass-produced in Belgium for ex-
port, these candies were sold by franchise owners who
had no training and little or no contact with the family
entrepreneurs of the local craft community.
The French were dismayed by the increasing popu-
larity and market share of candies they judged to be of
inferior quality and taste. According to them, Belgian
candies are too large (gms), too sweet ([email protected], and
too
full of fillers (grus). They contrast French candies made
from pure, dark, bittersweet chocolate with the larger
milk and white chocolate products that predominate chez
les Belges (in Belgian shops). In postindustrial societies
such as France, cuisine defines a critically important area
where economic power and cultural authority intersect.
French cuisine has long eqjoyed a preeminent reputation
among the cuisines of the world; continuing dominance of
the culinary world order is a matter of national pride. Yet
in this context what counts as French taste and confec-
tionery savoir faire is not at all clear. A s Dorinne Kondo
(1992 177) notes for Japanese fashion, "nation" and "cul-
ture" are problematized for French artisans when choco-
lates produced by foreign competitors gain French mar-
ket share. How can one speak of a distinctive French
chocolate when the French are just as likely to eat bars

made by Mars or Lindt or to offer gifts of bonbons made
by Belgian franchises as they are French candies?
Persistent concerns related to chocolate mirrored
the tenor of wider debates on the central themes of French
national identity. These themes include French competi-
tiveness, economic power, political stature, and, espe-
cially, cultural autonomy in new European and world
orders.
Demand, Commoditization, and Craft
Recent anthropological analyses move away from a
preoccupation with production to privilege exchange and
consumption as well as the social life of objects them-
selves.' Some of these accounts emphasize the nature of
commoditization as a process that extends from produc-
tion through exchange to consumption." Commodities
and exchange are defined in ways that mute the reified
contrasts between @ and commodity exchange. Never-
theless accounts of both g& and commodity exchange in
advanced capitalist contexts usually center on only one
type of commodity, mass-produced objects. This scholar-
ship ignores both the existence and commodity status of
craft objects as well as their particular suitability for gift
exchange in these contexts.
The growing exchange of "traditional" craft com-
modities in global markets suggests that their purchase
and consumption may be an essential feature of the pres-
ent world economy (Nash 1993). Yet the mechanisms that
underlie the demand for and consumption of craft com-
modities produced in postindustrial centers require fur-
ther study. Craft commodities acquire and shed culturally
specific meanings and symbolic value as they are circu-
lated and consumed. While closely tied to local contexts,

the exchange and consumption of craft commodities is
also mediated by complex, shfting class and taste distinc-
tions which are in turn shaped by global developments.
Few studies address the question of how and to what
extent the demand for craft objects is linked to taste-mak-
ing processes such as rapid fashion shifts, direct political
appeals, and the development of late capitalism itself.
If the globalization of markets and transnational con-
sumerism characterize the continuing expansion of indus-
trial capitalism, then this development also engenders a
contradictory trend. This trend is manifest in the reasser-
tion of local, culturally constituted identities, places, work
practices, and commodities as a source of distinction and
authenticity in the face of rapid change and the perceived
homogeneity of transnationalism (Harvey 1989). Claims
of cultural authenticity in advanced capitalism are often
linked to an ideal, aestheticized premodern past as well as
the groups, labor forms, and products associated with it."
C R A F T I N G C H O C O L A T E S I N F R A N C E / S
U S A N J . T E R R I O 71
Indeed it is the politics of cultural authenticity in the
globalization of markets that enables "genuine," locally
produced craft work and commodities to be maintained,
revived, and/or reinvented precisely because they can be
commoditized and sold as such.
What makes the chocolates sold in French boutiques
"authentic" and those retailed in Belgian franchises "inau-
thentic"? How are these labels linked to changing habits
of taste and the status struggles associated with them? In
a cultural model of consumption where elite habits are

disseminated downward and taste makers have height-
ened power to manipulate taste, chocolatiers and taste
makers collaborated to cod& and promote a new set of
expert criteria for determining both the quality and the
authenticity of "vintage" chocolates (Harvey 1989; Zukin
1991). The French differentiate and validate their choco-
lates through reference to a definitive taste standard
adapted from wine connoisseurs. In the pursuit of social
distinction, connoisseurship plays an important role. It
drives demand for the prestige goods associated with it by
reinforcing their rarity and conferring cultural capital on
those who consume them. In this game of newly formu-
lated rules of chocolate connoisseurship, consumers dem-
onstrate that they are worthy of symbolically appropriat-
ing the objects they purchase through their mastery and
display of esoteric taste protocols (Bourdieu 1984).
Moreover, in advanced capitalist societies where
consumers have little if any direct experience with pro-
duction, which itself is a symbol of alienation, Chaudun's
chocolates are incarnated signs. Unlike mass-produced
commodities, they do not require sigruficant cultural work
on the part of consumers to be moved symbolically from
the realm of the standardized, impersonal commodity into
the realm of personalized gift relations (Carrier 1990).
Craft commodities do this cultural work for consumers;
they make visible both a particular form of production
(linking the conception of a product to its execution) and
its attendant social relations. They are imbued with and
are the bearers of the social identities of their makers and
for this reason retain certain inalienable properties
(Mauss 1990[1925]; Weiner 1992). Produced in limited
quantities, using traditional methods and/or materials,
they evoke uninterrupted continuity with the past. The
historicities of these goods, even if invented or altered,
give them special value for both use and gift exchange.

This is what makes them "authentic" and distinguishes
them from the "fake" or "inauthentic" chocolate made
from identical materials. The silver jewelry made by
Navajo Indians, the confections crafted by Japanese arti-
sans, the pottery produced by Onta craftsmen, and the
French candies crafted by master chocolatiers all have
cultural authenticity in this sense.
If Chaudun's "art" exemplifies the principles of Veb-
lenian consumption, it also reveals the extravagance and
power of the potlatch (cf. Tobin 1992). Craftsmen like
Chaudun spend many hours sculpting and molding pieces
of confectionery art commissioned by both individual and
corporate clients. Coaxed from the most perishable and
delicate of media, chocolate art costing hundreds of dol-
lars must be destroyed in order to be eaten. In some
instances these pieces are publicly displayed only to be
ceremoniously shattered and then distributed to those
present.
The Gentrification of Chocolate Taste
Although Pierre burdieu's (1984) exhaustive ac-
count of French consumption succeeds in rescuing taste
from essentialist doctrines of aesthetics by linking it to
culture, his treatment of both culture and taste remains
largely arbitrary and static. In the end, objects are consti-
tutive elements of a tight, circular model of social and
cultural reproduction which perpetuates established
class hierarchies. N o t considered is the capacity of ob-
jects to play a role in blurring or subverting status conti-
nuities rather than merely reinforcing them. Neither is the
impact of cultural taste makers on demand and the pro-
c e s of commoditization.

In France, the considerable interest in culinary arts
is sigrufied by a huge gastronomic literature, tourist
guides, cooking demonstrations, and exhibits. These
sources provide consumers with comprehensive rules
governing the choice of ingredients, appropriate imple-
ments, correct preparation techniques, aesthetic presen-
tation, and the ordering and consumption of different
dishes in restaurants. In France as well as other postin-
dustrial economies, rising levels of per capita income and
greater disposable income have produced a broader mid-
dle class of consumers with the financial means to adopt
a "reflexive" attitude toward the consumption of goods in
general and food in particular (Zukin 1991). Their search
for differentiation and authenticity in the consumption of
food is reflected in the growing international demand for
gourmet cuisine. It is a cuisine dominated by the latest
French culinary trends. In what has been called "the gen-
trification of taste," distinctive regional culinary styles
and local foodstuffs are rediscovered and marketed by
taste makels, restaurateurs, and retailers (Bestor 1992).
The aesthetic presentation of locally and regionally pro-
duced foodstuffs in new taste combinations appeals to
sophisticated urbanites who want food that has both cul-
tural authenticity and cachet. The formulation of a new
French standard in chocolate consumption exemplifies
the gentrification of taste.
The new standard was organized around the basic
principles informing the nouvelle cuisine style of cooking
that dominated the French culinary establishment in the
1970s. Like nouvelle cuisine, this standard emphasized
healthful eating habits and dietetic concerns. It also man-

9 8 , N o . 1 M A R C H 1 9 9 6
dated fresh, natural ingredlents, novel but simplified fla-
vorings, and the production of “good-for-you” dark choco-
lates made with little sugar. The new standard emerged in
the late 1970s and early 1980s and was widely dissemi-
nated in gastronomic texts destined for the general public,
in craft publications compiled for customers, and in news-
paper and magazine articles, travel guides, television and
radio interviews, public craft events, chocolate tastings,
and boutique displays.”
Accordmg to this standard, only bittersweet choco-
late, rated according to the percentage of pure cacao,
constitutes a refined commodQ as opposed to a sweet
milk or whte chocolate. The use of the term cacao here is
significant. In French one word, cacao, glosses both the
raw material (cacao bean) and the processing phases that
yield cocoa and chocolate. The promotion of “les plus
grands crus de cacao” thus implies control over the entire
production process from cultivation to finished product,
while simultaneously lending the authority of the interna-
tionally accepted reference standard of French wines to
expert judgments of chocolate.
In the new game of chocolate connoisseurship in
which taste makers manipulate new fashions, consumers
emulate celebrated chocolatiers and Parisian gastro-
nomes. The life history of one chocolatier closely associ-
ated with the new standard, Robert Linxe, illustrates the
French cultural specificity of this process.
Lime is an acknowledged master chef, chocolatier,
and gastronome. He came from a working-class back-
ground and perfected his craft through the traditional
means of apprenticeship in several different confection-

ery houses and long years of hands-on work experience.
In 1954 Lime purchased a Parisian pastry business in
decline, building it into a highly successful operation over
more than 20 years. Anxious to specialize in chocolate,
Linxe sold his first business and in 1977 opened the House
of Chocolate in a very fashonable area of Paris, the Fau-
bourg Saint-H~nore.’~
Linxe’s new business attracted considerable media
attention. Because of the importance of seasonal confec-
tionery @t purchases in France and the high sales volume
at these times (between 35 and 50 percent of annual sales
are generated at Christmas), French chocolatiers are al-
ways showcased in special media features during Decem-
ber and before Easter. At a time when most French choc-
olatiers sold roughly equal numbers of milk and dark
chocolate candies, Linxe proposed a house line of speci-
alities which included 23 dark candies and only four milk
chocolates. He also subverted and remade traditional
work practices in the family artisanal boutique. At a time
when most craftsmen remained in the private space of the
family workshop, Linxe moved freely between the work-
shop and the public space of the boutique. He took ahighly
visible role in both production and sales by peIsonally
advising customers on the choice and proper consump-
tion of their chocolates. Linxe took the lead in “reeducat-
ing French palates” by offering guided tastings of his
candies within his boutique.
Reeducating French Palates
Throughout my fieldwork craftspeople and taste
makers explained the success of Belgian franchises by
alluding to an overall assault on traditional French taste
standards in food. They insisted that this began in the early

1970s with the proliferation of foreign fast-food chains
like MacDonald’s, currently the largest restaurant chain
in France. They bemoaned the fact that French palates
had been deformed ( d 6 f m 6 s ) by exposure to the ques-
tionable composition of foreign chocolates mass-pre
duced from cheap substitute ingredients. In 1990 an arti-
cle dealing specifically with the Belgian “invasion”
appeared in the national daily Le Monde (December 20).
Quotes from Parisian craftspeople stressed the need to
reeducate French palates and to defend a distinctive
French art of chocolate production and taste.
As my fieldwork progressed, it demanded my per-
sonal investigation of chocolate taste-as aesthetic judg-
ment, cultural standard, and sentient experience. Paul
Stoller (1994) has recently argued that ethnography has
long privileged visual metaphors and has, as a result,
failed to document the full range of sensory perception or
“the savory sauces of ethnographic life.” My personal
apprenticeship in taste and understanding of the craft, its
practitioners, and the tastes distinguishing “vintage”
French chocolates from Belgian “imitations” demanded
the education of my own palate. Through guided repeti-
tion, my “good taste” in chocolate was habituated and
embodied.
Since 1977, Lime has conducted literally dozens of
interviews which have been widely disseminated through
national and international meha. Lime agreed to an inter-
view-of which a tasting is an integral part-and after a
tour of his flagship Saint-Honor6 boutique and workshop,
we sat down. Linxe looked at me over his glasses and
announced that the best part had arrived-the tasting. I
had fully expected and even greatly anticipated a choco-
late tasting, yet as I waited for him to get the chocolates,
I felt my palms begin to sweat and unruly butterflies begin

to flutter in my stomach. The tasting was designed to
instill new taste criteria as well as to test my judgment as
a discriminating consumer of chocolate. At the time I was
well aware of the new taste standard.
During six months of preliminary fieldwork in 1989 I
had conducted some informal experiments in which I
entered French artisanal boutiques and specifically re-
quested sweet milk chocolates in order to observe the
reaction of the salespeople. What shocked me as I sat in
Linxe’s boutique was my fear of …
180 Carmem Silvia Rial
_"A Globaliza<;ao publicitaria: 0 exeI11plo dos fast-fi]ods" na
Revisla
Brasjiejra de Comuniear;ao - Intercom v.XVI n.2,juVdez 1993.
_Fast-Food: Tbe taste ofImages paper apresentado em Bielefeld,
XIII Congresso IvIundial de Sociologia, 1994 (fotoc6pia).
SCH'VARZ, Roberto "As ideias fora do lugar" in Ao Vellecdor
as
Balalas.S. P. DUClS Cidades, 1977.
SILVA, Luis Martins da Silva Ag/obalizar;ao dos fast foods e
eeonolJJia
do tempo, fotoc6pia, 1993.
SP ITZER, Gerard "Habitudes aliIllenqaires, du reve a la
rcalite" elll
Neo-Restauration n.158,janeiro 1986.
VIRILIO, P. 0 espar;o errtko - Rio de Janeiro. 34 Literatura,

1993.
N()l'IQ
THIS MA1IIIA1 MAY IE
PROTECTED IY COPVRlGHT
tAW {TIJII: ,., U;.I.. ~i
" A_ .. , n
"BRAZIL DISPLAC£D: R£SJAURANJ 51 IN NAGOYA,
JAPAN II*
Daniel T. Linger
Department ofAnthropology
University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz-USA
ReslImo: Este artigo eXc1mil1a a formarao de idel1tidade enlre
brasileiros, cuja maioria sao desceJldelltes de jafJollcses
atualmclltc
residentes 110 japao. Focalizo 0 Restaurante 51, um restallrante
brasiJeiro em iVagoya, argumentando que esse reSlauranre
cultiFa,
.1SSUlll ida mcnte.. ull1a ielel1tidade brasileira deslocada de
seu paf<;. 0
Restauranle 51 oferece comida caseira brasileira .. mldia e
sociabilidade.. ao mesmo tempo que confirma.. implicitamente..
solidao..
distancia e deslocamenlO. Eu enfalizo que a identidade
hrasileira
deslocada que e cOl1strufda e reforrada em reSlaUraJUes
brasileiros
ramo 051, onde a diferenra flJJica e fortemente trarada em
oposirao
:1 um solo estrangeiro.. diverge substaIlcialmenle de uma
identidade
brasileira no local, encorajada por um "restaurante no Brasil".

Abstract: This paper examines identity-making among
Brazilians,
mostly ofjapanese descent.. who currcJJ{~Y reside ill japan. 1
focus
on Restaurante 51, a "restaurante brasileiro" in iVagoya,
arguing thar
51 forthrightly cultivates a displaced Brazilian identit)'.
RestauraJ1(('
51 offers Brazilians familiar food, media, alJd sociabili(v, at the
same
lime implicitl)' confirming feelings of loneliness, distance, and
dislocation. I emphasize that the displaced BraziliaIl identit),
bUIlt
and reinforced in "restaurantes brasileiros" such as 51, where
ethnic
difference is strongly profiled against a foreign ground.
diverges
substantiall)' from a Brazilian identity-in-place that mighl be
encouraged at home by a "restaurante 110 Brasil. "
t Acknowledgments: This research was funded by grants from
the Jap;11l
Foundation and the Social Sciences Division of the University
of California, Santa
Cruz. Thanks to Flavia Bespalhok for her kind assistance.
• ~ •. I.L-! T>~~.~ AI............. "nro ~ n !i. n. 181-203. iulho de
1907
182 Daniel T. Linger
Se oriente, rapaz

Pc/a cOllstclafao do Cruzeiro do SuI. ..
- Gilberto Gil, ('OrielJte"
~ rose is not always a rose]
Every credible theory of meaning - structural, interpretive,
cognitive, psychoanalytic - emphasizes that significance
depends upon
COIllext. Gregory Bateson (1972 f1955J) explains the
contingency of
symbols in terms of cognitive "frames." Let me offer an
example. ,
wild rose evokes a certain meaning; the same rose, cut and
placed in a
vase 011 the dining-room table, evokes another. Framed by
what 'C
think o[ as "nature," the rose may convey ideas of harmony,
sponulIleous beauty, the wonder and integrity ofthe Ilonhuman
world.
Framed by the interior of a house, the rose's dissonant color,
form,
and origins stand out as deliberate accents in a humanly
designed
habitat. Our attention is thereby dra"wn to the interplay of
wildne'is
and domesticity rather than the searnlessness of flower,
vegetation,
earth, and sky. Figured against a new ground, the rose means
SOlllcthing else.
This essay compares Dona Lica's, a "restaurante no Brasil,"
with
51, a "rescaurante brasileiro" in Nagoya, Japan. 2 Both serve

types of fi)(xJ
widely consumed and appreciated by Bra7i1ians. TIle similarity
ends there,
[or symbolically speaking, the two establishments are distinct.
Consequently,
1 shall argue, they engender different fonlls of Brazilian
identity.
The earliest studies of migration distinguished between what
we lllight call identities-in-place and identities dhplaced. Clyde
Mitchell's classic ethnography (195G) of Eisa migrants to
Luanshya, a
The allusion is to Gertrude Stein's well-known "rose is a rose is
a rose~ line.
Gertrude Stein was an American in Paris. An American (in
France) is nOl an
American (in the U.S.). More on this below.
2 51 is the real name of this restaurant. I have also used the
real names of DolLl
Lica and Flavia Bespalhok. who works the counter at 51; all
other personal nalllt"S
are pseudonyms. I conducted fieldwork in Nagoya and vicinity
during the summer
of 199'1 and from July 1995 to July 1996. I made about two
dozen visits to :11.
, Brasil displaced: Restaurant 51 in Nagoya, Japan l~n
mining town in the Zambian Copperbelt, emphasized that the
coIltrastive identity Bisa-in-tm'n, intentionally cultivated in (1
milieu
of ethnic diversity, diverged fundameIllally from the traditional
Bisa
identity formed in the Illonoethnic countryside. Bisa-irHm'ln
(1ncl Bisa-

in-the-countryside were both authentically Bisa, but they were
differently Bisa. The central argument, restated and elaborated
in
countless works (e.g., Barth 1969, Oliven 1m)2, Hannerz ]992),
is that
identities are both changeable and situational. Thc same auto-
designation - "Bisa" - is no guarantee that the meaning of
"Bisa" is
stable, for the content of" Eisa" idcnl it.)' depcnds, among 01
her things,
on t.he cont.ext ill which it is lived. Nor, then, should we
expect
"Brazilian" identity to have t.he same value in Brazil and in a
foreign
land. That is, a "brasileiro no Brasil" likely has a different
sense of self
froIll a "brasileiro no exterior."
,
Restaurants are key sites of identity-making and identity
confirmation. By definition they are places of cornmensality,
and
commensalil.y tends to map people into groups - family, caste,
gender,
c1l'lss, community of believers. Eating together reinforces
sentimellts
ofsameness, even distinction, as people share a table and
incorporate
common substances into the body. koreovcr, foods themselves
arc
powerfully evocative. They can signify well-being or sickness,
security
or danger; they conjure up times, places, whole scenes from the
past
or, perhaps, visions of the future. finally, eatiIlg in a restaurant

is a
practice requiring knowledge ofa cultural script. That is, jointly
with
l others one produces a culturally SF ecific social event. Hence
a
~
f restaurant provides important symbolic resources for building
an
! identity. The subdued diffusion of BrazilianlJess at. Dona
Lic(1's
f "restaurante no Bra~il" contrasts sharply with the conspicuous
propagation of Brazilianness at ResLaurante 51, the "restaurante
brasileiro" that is the focus of this paper. 1fDona Lica's
restaurant-in-
place quiet.ly reinforces a Brazilian identity-in-place, the
displaced
Restaurante 51 forthrightly cultivates a displaced Brazilian
identit y.
,I Dona lica's: a "restaurante no Brasi I"
~
M Durin g our 1991 stay in Sao LUIS do lvfaranhao, my family
(inc!
:(
I llsed to cat at Dona Lica's, a no-name cafe a few steps from
our hOll~(,
.~
Horizontes Antropo16gicos, Porto Alegre, ano 3, 11. 5, p. 181-
203. julho de 19~)7

in the bairro Madre Deus. At the time, occupied as 1 was with
more
dramatic, less pleasant topics, Don;t Lica's was of no particular
ethnographic interest to me; I have n~collectionsof it ,
agreeably tinged
with saudade, rather than detailed fieldnotes. The cafe occupied
a
placid intersection animated only by neighborhood residents
goiIlg
about their daily chores, a passing peddler or carro~a, the
occasional
procession heading to the nearby cemetery, or a rare car jolting
up
from the Avenida Beira-Mar. You could miss Dona Lica's ifyou
weren't
paying attentioll. The nondescript building was like most in the
bairro:
plaster walls, tile roof, wooden-shuttered windows, of
indeterminate.'
age. Inside the cramped, sultry dining room were two or three
w(x>delJ
tables, languidly circled by flies. Out-of-date calendars served
as decor.
ATV was always blaring from a shelf. The menu, which bore a
variable
relationship to the actual oITerings, was painted on the wall. A
huge
rubber tree arched overhead, partially shading a narrow cement
patio;
we often ate outside, seeking relief from the heat. But thili was,
after
all, Sao Luis: at midday the city's air went still and even in the
shadows

the rays of the equatorial sun glanced up from the broken
cobbles.
Later all, Illen drifted in, gathering on this same patio. Bottles
of
Cerma beer, each arriving, frigid, in a white styrofoam case,
slowly
amassed on the tables, as stars began to show through the tree's
heavy
leaves. Conversation and laughter flO','ed as easily as the
evening breeze
ofTthe bay.
The cafe was a family operation. Dona Lica herself cooked
the meals - usually fried fish, chicken, or beef, with rice, beans,
farillha.
noodles. and slices of fresh tomato, cucumber, and onion. H.er
food
was hearty and plentiful, made with straightforward ingredients
aIld
ullusual care. Dona Lica's cheerful children wiped tables and
served
the patrons, most ofwhom lived or worked in the neighborhood.
Few
came frolll elsewhere 10 eat here, for the cafe was not chic and
did not
serve the arroz de cuxa and camaroada of the famously "typical"
maranhense restaurants. Dona Lica's did not appear in tourist
brochures, nor was it an underground sensation. It was
exceptional
olll y within its unpretentious genre of neighborhood diner.
Eating at Dona Lica's was something like eating at home. The
fooel was uncomplicated, familiar, served without affectation.
Dona
Lica alld her children treated us well. We exchanged jokes and
slllall

talk. They knew our names, and we knew theirs. After a while,
we felt
obligated to eat at Dona Lica's with a certain frequency - it
would be a
Honzontcs Antropol6gicos. POria Alegre, ana 3, n. 5, p. 181-
203. julho de 1997
1l):)
Brasil displaced: Restaurant 51 in Nagoya, Japan
betrayal not to do so. For me, the anthropologist, eating there
fed the
welcome illusion that, camouflaged by the cafe, I had melted
into the
background. I think eating and drinking at Dona Uca's had a
a>lnparcible, if
less conscious, effed on the local residents, who Thereby
reallinlled, with no
ado whatsoever, their sense of secure connection to the
neighlx)rho()d
and to the Brazilian universe extending infinitely around it.
For Dona Lica's restaurant. blended effi>rtJessly and naturally
into Madre Deus, and lvfadre Deus rested comfortably in a
series of
collceptually nested social units: cit.y, state, region, nalion.
1)0IIa Lica's
was implicitly sao-Iuisense, maranhense. nordestino, brasileiro.
It is hard
to picture Dona lk.a's outside its modest :>airro. But imagining
a relocated
version of DOlla Liell's makes for an interesting thought
experiment. If
the cafe were in the south, would it be a n leeting-place for
northeaslemers~

Surely that would change its character. And could it be located
overseas?
What. would it be then? Such a queslion is a litrle mind-
boggling. The
restaurant couldn't exist in t.he same form; no doubt entirely
nove!
meanings and practices would be forced upon it. Even if DOlla
Lica
served up the same food, the significance of the beans and
farinha, the
fish and meat, t.he kind attention, would alter radically.
Restaurante 51 is haIfa world a',:ay from Dona Uca's, in
Nagoya,
Japan, a First Vorld inrlust.rial city ofabout two million. 51 is
a combinatIon
of lanchonete, churrascaria, and k~ja de produws brasilciros.
Although
the cooks at. 51 serve up food familiar to Brazilians, 51 bears
lillie
resemblance to Dona Lica's, where restaurant is of a piece '-'ith
setting
and llrazilianness is unmarked, a non-issue. Unlike Dona
Lic.a's, 51 is a
place of conscious, and paradoxical, connection. It invites
expalriate
Brazilians to feel at home, offering a multistrandecl symbolic
link to Brazil.
But ifSl were home, it would not be so overtly, incongruously
Brazilian.
Framed by a Japanese city, 5] simultaneously accentuate')
Brazilianllcss
and alienness. In contrast to the matter-of-fact Brazilian
identity
inadvertently fostered at Dona Li(:a's, a complex, explicit,
dislocated

Brazilian identity is thrown into reliefat Restaurante 51.
51: a '!restaurante brasileiro II in Japan
Currently].5 million Brazilians live in foreign countries.
"Brazucas" residing in the U.S., most without documents, form
the
Horizontes Antropo16gicos, Porto Alegre, ano 3, n. 5, p. 181-
203. julho oe J (1(17
largest contingent, their numbers now estimated at more than
half ~
million. Among First vVorlcl countries, Japan comes next,
housing (as
of 1996) more than t70,000 Brazilian nationals, almost all legal
residents attracted by a 1990 change inJapan's immigration law.
3 The
ne,,' law, prompted by shortages of unskilled labor for dirty
and
dangerous industrial jobs, permits descendants ofJapanese
(njkkcis·)
and their spouses alld children to live in Japan for renewable
periods
ranging from one to three years.!>
Hence almost all of the adult Brazilians in Japan come as
migrant workers, or dekassegujs.6 Aichi prefecture, an auto-
and auto-
parts manufacturing center whose largest city is Nagoya, has
over

30,000 Brazilian residents, more than any other Japanese
province.
Intent 011 saving money, men earn upwards of 1200 yen
(¥1200, about
RS12) per hour and women about a third less, with 25% extra
for
overtime. Vorkdays are long and holidays few. Most Braziliam,
including nikkeis, speak only halting, limited Japanese and
many find
Japanese food and forms of recreation strange or unexciting.
Their
frustration finds expression in the persistent complaint that
"aqui nao
lem nada pra fazer," or "em termos de lazer, 0 Japao e
atrasaco."
Restaurantes brasileiros are therefore important centers of
recreatioll
for dekasseguis.
3 An ltamaraty census released in March 1996 shows one
and a halfmillion Brazilians
living overseas, over 600,000 of them in the U.S. (Klintowitz
1996:26-27). The
reliability of the figures, which attempt to take illegal workers
into account, varies
by country. In Japan, however, undocumented Brazilians are
few. The JapanesC'
lvlinistry of Justice, Department of Immigration, reports
168,662 Brazilians
resident in Japan as of June 1995 (International Press, 1995:1-
C). This figure
does not include approximately 20,000 Brazilians of dual
nationality (Klimo..... i!l
1996:28).
See Margolis (1994) for an ethnographic survey of Brazilians
living in the U.S.,

focusing on residents of the New York area.
4 Japanese words, and Japanese words adopted into the
Portuguese spoken in
Japan, are italicized the fIrst time they appear in the text.
Singular and plural
forms of nouns in Japanese usually do not differ, but when
Japanese nouns are
taken into Portuguese (e.g., "nikkei"), plural forms generally
add an "s" ("nikkeis").
5 On Japanese immigration policy, see Yamanaka (1993) and
Oka (1994).
6 This is the Portuguese rendition of the plural of the Japanese
word usually
rOlll3l1ized dekasegj.
Horizontes Antropol6gicos, Porto Alegre, ana 3, n. 5, p.
181·203. julho de 1997
lRi
51 is perhaps the best-known of Nagoya's many restaurarJles
br{sileiros. Its lively neighhorhood, called Osu, is· an earthy,
but not
tawdry, zone of Japanese shjraJJ1r1chi ("downtown," or popular
c.it y)
culture. Osu lies just south of Sakae, Nagoya's chief
entertainment
;l11d commercial district, on the other side ofa highway
overpass. The
shops in Osu, smaller, more specialized, less formal than
Sakae's great
department stores, display their wares along t.he sidewalk,

a11l1oUlKillg
their discount prices with hanel-lettered signs. At the orange-
trimmed
Osu Kannon Temple, probably the most visit.ed Buddhist
temple ill
"agoya, people light incense, deliver short prayers, and feed the
pigeons. Then they head into the adjacent arcade to shop. This
arcade,
like the temple an Osu landmark, is home to 51, which rubs
elbo,"s
with noodle shops, octopus-dumpling stalls, sake bars, pinball
parlors,
dry-goods stores, hair-cutting salons, discount electronics and
camera
dealers, and vendors of used American clothing. Many Japanese
slow
with curiosity when passing the Brazilian restaurant, but few
have the
courage or inclination to take a seat alongside t.he foreign
dekasseguis.
Above t.he tables of the ground-floor lanchonete, a Brazilian
nag and the pentagram logo ofCacha<;a 51 adorn a bright
plastic greefl-
and-yellow sign. It reads, "Churra:;caria Restallrante A<;Ollgue
Padaria
produtos Brasileiros Internat.ional Foods Forum Zoomp Fitas de
Vfdeo." Thejumble ofwords in roman script means as little to
Japanese
passers-by as does the surrounding forest of ideographs to the
Brazilians. The Japanese and the Brazilians are, almost withoUI
except.ion, complementarily illiterate. For the most part, t.hey
are also
culturally distant and communicclte with difficulty. This
disheveled
sidewalk cafe is a distinct anomaly. Nagoya has few open-air

eateries,
and no other that features guarana, empadinhas de palmito, and
~/Iarias
moles.
Up a narrow stairway to the right of the tables is the
churrascaria, in a t.emperature-controlled room decorated wi th
Brazilian travel posters and furnished with sturdy tables and
high-
backed chairs. Just around the corm r is 51's boutique, selling
clothes,
CDs, chinelos, greeting cards, perfumes, cosmetics, and
Brazilian
souvenirs and trinkets. Forumjeans, Zorba underpants, and Fico
and
HD casual wear are big sellers, for many dekasseguis think
Japanese
clothes are cut to disguise, rat.her th,1I1 flatter, body lines.
Next door,
under separate management, is a food shop selling packaged.
frozen,
Horizontes Antropo16gicos, Porto Alegre, ano 3, tl. 5, p. 181-
203. julho ,it' 19~)7
and canned goods, imported mainly from Brazil but also from
southea~
Asia and Peru. One can buy feijoada, goiabada, manioc root,
COCOlWI
milk, quinoa, Thai curries, palm hearts, and dark-roasted coffee.
But the center of activity at 51 is the lanchonete. Freezing in

winter, torrid in summer, it nevertheless attracts a clientele
year-round.
A counter faces outward toward the foot traffic of the mall,
dividinK
the area in two. Reading materials and videos of popular
Brazilian
TV programs occupy Illuch of the rear space. 7 51 sells
Brazilian
periodicals, bilingual dictionaries, and road atlases ofJapan, but
Iht:
most popular publications are the Portuguese-language
expatriate
weeklies: lornal Tudo Bem, Folha Mundial, Nova Visfio, and
the
!n{ernalional Press, which also publishes a Spanish (but,
despite the
name, no English) edition. A long refrigerator holding cheap
Australian
beef, Brazilian sausage, and carbonated beverages runs across a
back
wall.
In front of the counter, rickety wooden tables ringed by rickety
metal stools spill into the arcade walkway. The arrangement,
tacky
bur congenial, is unique to the mall and perhaps to Nagoya.
Ashtrays
arid squeeze l:x>ttles ofcondiments top the plastic tablecloths.
Alongside
the tables a rack bulges with advertising propaganda from
Brazilian
banks and Japanese long-distance phone companies, big
businesses
com peting for de kassegui moncy. One of these companies, the
giant
KDD. has mounted an international pay phone on the opposite

wall,
near the grease-encrusted chicken rotisserie.
Standing at the counter, Flavia Bespalhok, a Brazilian frolll
Londrina, Parana, dispenses salgados and doces, beer and
guarana,
meat, videos, newspapers, sympathy, and advice. Bracketing the
cash
register in front of her sit a thermos of luke''''arm sweetened
cofTee
and a slllall murky aquarium with bubbling water and glcx)my
goldfish.
OfT to onc side, risolis, espetinhos, coxinhas, and empadinhas
slowly
desiccat.e under heat lamps. Below them, a misty refrigerated
case
displays queijadinhas, cocada, and quindins. Available drinks
include
Anranica beer, guarana Brahma, and of course pinga, cacha~a
51.
In early 1996,51 moved its videos and reading materials to the
boutique dunng
a fit of remcxkling.
Honzontes Antropo16gicos, Porto Alegre, ano 3, n. 5, p. 18]-
203. julho de ]997
18Sl
Despite its haphazard inelegance, 51 is cosy, inviting. i111
arresting contrast to the too-shiny, too-hygienic Japanese
noodle-and-
dumpling place across the arcade. Around 51 's tables gather
mostly

Brazilians, with a sprinkling of other Latin Americans,
Japanese, and
sundry gaijin (foreigners).8 They peruse newspapers, rent
videos,
purchase meat, cakes, pastries, and bel1cos (marmitas). On
wcekcnds,
chickens turn and crisp in the roaster: at Christmas, when the
weat.her
turns frigid and tinsel dangles above the counter, tiny and very
expensive turkeys take their place. People come and go. A
proper,
carefully coifIed senhora buys a bottle of cachac;a. A young
man Oil a
bicycle returns four videos, and takes four more. Customers sit
down
with an Antartica, talk about work, ask about. mutual
acquaintances,
complain about the weather, reminisc.e about Brazil. Fragments
of
collvcrsation circulate. "What happened to Lucinha?" A
musician
recalls that a dozen years ago the Varig crews used to smuggle
in CArne
seca, Nowadays you could be in Brazil; Ve:ja arrives beforc the
cover
date. Peruvians drink Inka Kola and buy charcoal. An Indian
Illatl
with an amused smile silently nurses a beer. AJapancse couple
warily
inspect the cases and opt fc)r a rocambole de chocolate. An
Australian
missionary rails in English about "Clinton's plan to stick a
computcr
chip inside everybody's head." 1 ask the man llexl to me:
"(':rOsta do

]apao?" He shrugs. "C-osto nao. Me aclaptci."
There are regulars. Kawada, a nikkei man, and his wife :'eusrJ.,
a "brasileira,"9 both paulistas in their 50s, work at a nearby
love hotel,
a popular trysting place. Kawada was a metalworker in Sao
Paulo, hut
in Japan they told him he was too old for t.he factory. Neusa
describes
their work as secure and not too heavy. The two work wgether.
They
can change a room in five minutes - the faster the better,
because the
hotel makes more money wit h a quick turnover. They gel lIO
'(leal iOllS
B The word gaijin ("foreign person") uttered by Japanese
sometimes has a derisive'
edge. Brazilians, like other foreigners in Japan, often describe
themselves ironically
as "gaijin" (or "gaijins"; either plural form is used), alluding to
their margillalil:'.
9 Nikkeis commonly refer to Brazilians who are not of
Japanese descent as
"brasileiros" and "brasileiras," or simply "nao-descendentes.'· (I
Jl Brazil, nikkeis
sometimes refer to non-descendents as "gaijin," a word they
find applied to
themselves in Japan.) Depending on the context, nikkeis maY of
course also refer
to themselves as "brasi1eiros.··
Horizontes Antropo16gicos, Porto Alegre, ano 3, 11. 5, p, 181-
203. julho (k 1~)~)7

190 Daniel T. Unzu
except for New Year's Day, an unpaid holiday, and one
dayofrest ptr
week. Every Friday, their assigned day off, they come to 51 to
eitl.)
bema. Takashi, a Japanese traffic worker, comes often. He
snack-i.
exchang-es Japanese lessons for Portuguese, struggles through
j!anchefe, and dreams of the tropics and a Brazilian girlfriend.
~Iakik().
another Japanese, works as a cook in a primary school. She like
caipirinhas and has learned to make them. Saclao, a nikkei in
his 'H~
most recently of Minas, comes almost every day, drinking
chopps ill
slow succession. All accountant in Brazil, here he is a solderer.
()IIC
clay he announces he is moving to Osaka. He has taken a job ill
it
sewer-pipe f<ictory there; his brasileira wife and two children
will fillally
join him, ending his four years of solitude in Japan. Those ill
the
laIlchonete hoist their glasses and wish him well.
The view from the counter
PerhClps the best way for me to convey the atmosphere of:l I
is through the eyes of Flavia Bespalhok, the woman who has
presided
amiably over the lunch-counter since it opened for business in
early

] ~J9.-L Vc met after work one cold evening in January 1996.
Lightly
edired excerpts from rhe interview follow. 1(' I have capitalized
words
Fl;'tviC'l cmphC'lsizcd and have bracketed clarifications,
glosses of
JajJallese, and SOllle phrases in the original Portuguese.
*
Ba'iically, our clientele is Brazilian. I'd say between 90 and ~):)
fJn cellL A lot of people come frolll elsewhere, lIot only from
NClgO)'Cl,
[but also froml Toyota, Gifu, HClmamatsu.[J There are two
types of
BraziliallS, quite different. There are those who COllie, buy
their
magazine or newspaper, buy their salgadinho, and leave right
away. I
know thelll, joke around with them, and talk to them, but they
just
buy C'll1d go C'lway, ~ow, there are also those who come every
week.
10 The excerpts presented below are translated from
Portuguese.
11 Locations with relatively large Brazilian populations, within
an hour or two of
:--iagoya hy train.
Horizontes Antropol6gicos, POria Alegre, ana 3, 11. 5, p. 181-
203. julho de 19~17
191

buy something, read, or else come and stay hours and hours
sitting
there, talking, making friends.
Ve'vc got three or four groupS [turmasl that come every
,'cekencI, to drink, talk, and hang around for hours. There's a
group
of six or so, who we call the Tunna do Barlllho, you can
imagine why.
They live in different places, they come and meet here. They're
all
IllCIL In the beginning each had a Filipina girlfriend. They
used to
come to the [upstairs} restaurClIll. in a group of 15, 16. These
days
they hang out more in the lanchonete. The last time they were
here
the)' drank three cases ofbeer and there were six people. Three
times
~i ... There ,,,'as a a guy who used to bring his guitar, he sings
badly,
out of tune, just between us (laughs), and every weekend Ihe
and some
others] used to come, and play music. So it turned into a real
Brazilian
bar. TheJapanese would stop and look, it was really great. I'd
improvise
cllacoalhos. I'd ask for beans or rice and a can of guarana, and
then
seal it and give it to them, and they'd play sambas. One of them
hrought
a surc!o once, and so they'd make a roda and would sing
sambas.

It's funny how the Japanese let themselves go I<it 511· Because
it's a vcry Brazilian atmosphere, right. They start to talk loudly,
like
the Brazilians. Several of them have told me, "This is reCllly
good, next
Sunday we're coming back," and the next Sunday, there they
,,'ere
I
t:l
again. This happened with two couples, who were drinking and
eating
together with the Brazilians, and saying, ",",Vow, this is rcally
guml,"
they LET 1'1 fEMSELVES GO.
'There are lotherl custOlllcrs who come evcry weekcIld. There'"

r
I.
I
a chubby mall who comes every week, he buys all the papers.
tile (HI}
[expatriate I papers, ane! then he goes up to the restaurant, he
cats, he
comes down, buys meat, buys la roasted] chicken, and 'iits
dOWIl. ,1
the table. He starts to read the paper and starts to chirchat. And
so
he's already made two or three friends, he's always there, every
week

he comes. 1think he doesn't even reac!. It's more like an excuse.
There's
another man named Saclao, he comes almost EVERY DAY. It
occu rs
to me that he doesn't have anywhere to go. It's always the same
thing,
first he asks for a chopp, then a 51, and he buys a newspaper.
fIe
starts 10 read the paper, but he's not much for talking. Then he
drinks
flve or six chopps. And aftenvards he buys allother magazine
and re(lcls.
SOllletimes he buys two or three magazines and says to me:
"Vould
Horizontes Antropo16gicos, Porto Alegre, ann 3, 11. 5, p. 181-
20:1. julho d~ 10(17
192 Daniel T. Lin~C"f
you hold these for me? I'll be back tomorrow. It's just that if I
keep
them on the rabIe, I'll read them today, and tomorrow I won't
hart'
<1nything to reaci. Vould you hold them for me and give them
to nH'
tomorrow~" I hold them for him.
There are some customers who just come to get videotapes.
There's onc guy, Alberto, ,,,'ho is …
19

TIle Sweetness of Fat
Health, Procreation, and Sociability
in Rural Jamaica
ELISA]. SOBO
In the United States there is a well-known saying that you can't
be too rich or too thin,
but in rural Jamaica, amassing wealth and keeping slim have
antisocial connotations.
Ideally, relatives provide for each other, sharing money and
food. Because kin share wealth,
no one gets rich; because kin feed each other, no one becomes
thin. Cultural logic has
it that people firmly tied into a network of kin are always plump
and never wealthy.
Especially when not well liked, thin individuals who are neither
sick nor poor are
seen by their fellow villagers as antisocial and mean or stingy.l
These individuals do not
create and maintain relationships through gift-giving and
exchange. They hoard rather
than share their resources. Their slender bodies bespeak their
socially subversive natures:
thinness indicates a lack of nurturant characteristics and of
moist, procreative vitality-
things on which a community's reproduction depends.
Rural Jamaicans' negative ideas about thinness are linked with
their ideas about health.
As Sheets-Johnstone points out, "The concept of the body in any
culture and at any
time is shaped by medical beliefs and practices" (1992: 133).

Notions concerning health
can profoundly influence the interactive and symbolic
communications made through
our bodies. These notions greatly influence the ideal standards
set for bodies and affect
the ways we experience, care for, and shape (or try to shape)
our bodies and those of
others (Browner 1985; Ehrenreich and English 1979; Nichter
and Nichter 1987; Payer
1988).
Importantly, notions about health are-in a very tangible way-
notions about body
ideals, and they have social meaning. Health traditions do not
exist in isolation from
other realms of culture, such as gender relations and economy
(Farmer 1988; Jordanova
1980; Martin 1987), nor are they isolated from extracultural
influences, such as ecology
and global political conditions (Farmer 1992; Vaughan 1991).
Often, ideas about the
body and its health are put forward as rationalizations or
ideological supports for con-
ditions, such as class and gender inequalities or personal
maladjustments (e.g., Kleinman
Ir too thin,
motations.
are wealth,
.1 logic has
wealthy.
r poor are
lals do not
lard rather

ve natures:
~ vitality-
out health.
lPd at any
ling health
ie through
and affect
ld those of
987; Payer
bout body
Ition from
Jordanova
as ecology
about the
ts for con-
,Kleinman
The Sweetness of Fat 257
1980; Laws et al. 1985; Lock 1989; Scheper-Hughes 1992). In
this chapter, I describe
the traditional health beliefs that inform understandings of body
shape in rural Jamaica,
and I trace the connections between these ideas and Jamaican
understandings about
sociability (see also Sobo 1993b).
For rural Jamaicans, the ideal body is plump with vital fluids,
and maintaining the
flow of substances through the body is essential for good health.
Taylor (1992) argues
that an emphasis on maintaining a continuous, unimpeded flow
through the body is

common among those who value reciprocity and emphasize the
obligation kin have to
share with each other, which Jamaicans do. Sickness occurs
when the flow is blocked
or otherwise "anomic" (Taylor's term, 1988); individual
pathologies are homologous
with social pathologies, caused by disturbances in the flow of
mutual support and aid.
Taylor shows that health-related symbolism "establishes
implicit connections between
the bodily microcosm and the social macrocosm" (1988: 1343).
"Liquids are especially
privileged vehicles of this symbolism," he says, "because they
possess the capacity to
flow, and thus to mediate between distinct realms of being ...
attenuating the opposi-
tion between self and other" (1988: 1344). In rural Jamaica,
people are physically linked
by bodily liquids-fluids like semen and the blood that flows
from mother to fetus dur-
ing gestation. They also are linked through food that is shared.
Both vital bodily fluids
and foods fatten the body, making plumpness an index of the
quality and extent of one's
social relations as well as an index of good physical health (see
Cassidy 1991).
The concept of the body-in-relation may seem foreign to U.S. or
Western European
readers who tend to view the body like they view the self-as
autonomous, individual,
and independent. Their bodies serve primarily as vehicles for
the expression of the indi-
vidual self, and so of self-directed denial, control, and mastery
(Becker 1990: 1-10).

Jamaicans, however, recognize the body's shape as an index of
aspects of the social net-
work in which a person is (or is not) enmeshed and of those
individual traits that affect
that person's social connectedness, such as the ability and
willingness to give (see Cas-
sidy 1991).
Influenced by British interests, much of the anthropological
literature on Jamaica deals
with kinship and social structure (e.g., Blake 1961; Clarke
1957; Douglass 1992; Smith
1988). Some studies examine the cultural construction of
kinship, but none examine
the ethnophysiology of blood ties and most overlook the body as
such, despite its nec-
essary role in procreation. Some works concerned with
Jamaican family planning include
descriptions of the reproductive body (e.g., Brody 1981;
MacCormack 1985), but the
health-related significance of blood and the physical intricacies
of consanguineal and
other consubstantial kin ties (and of their behavioral
ramifications) are left unexplored.
Pan-Caribbean ethnomedical notions about blood are discussed
by Laguerre (1987),
but the social and cultural meanings of body morphology and of
bodily components
(and the sharing thereof) have received little attention.2
METHODS AND SETTING
Research for this chapter was carried out in a coastal village of
about eight hundred
people in the parish of Portland, where I lived for a year in
1988 and 1989 (see Sobo

1993b for a full account of the research). Data were collected
through participant-observation
and interviews that took place in community settings and in
private yards. I also solicited
drawings of the body's inner workings from participants.
258 Elisa J. Sobo
Like most Jamaicans, the majority of the villagers were
impoverished descendants of
enslaved West Africans.3 Many engaged in small-scale
gardening, yet few could man-
age on this alone. To supplement their meager incomes, people
also took in wash, hired
themselves out for odd jobs, engaged in part-time petty trade
like selling oranges, and
relied on relatives for help.
Jamaican villages typically consist of people brought together
by ancestry, or by prox-
imity to a shop or postal agency. In some cases, they are
organized around an estate
where village members sell their labor. Households are often
matrifocal (see Sargent
and Harris 1992: 523; Smith 1988: 7-8), and nonlegal conjugal
unions and visitingrela_
tionships (in which partners reside separately) are common.
Houses are generally made
of wood planks and zinc sheeting; often they lack plumbing and
electricity. People build
their houses as far apart as possible, but they are usually still
within yelling distance of
a neighbor.

BODY BASICS
Jamaicans value large size, and they build the body by eating.
Different foods turn into
different bodily components as needed, either for growth or to
replenish substances lost
through work and other activities. Comestibles that do not so
much build the body but
serve to make people feel full are called food. In common
Jamaican usage, food means
only tubers-belly-filling starches not seen as otherwise
nutritious.
Blood is the most vital and the most meaning-invested bodily
component. It comes
in several types. When unqualified by adjective or context, the
word blood means the
red kind, built from thick, dark liquid items such as soup, stout,
and porridge and from
reddish edibles such as tomatoes. Red wine, also referred to as
tonic wine, can be used
to build blood, and blood is sometimes called wine. Some think
that the blood of meat-
kind, such as pork or beef, is directly incorporated into human
blood; others say that
meat's juices build blood. Wild hog meat, redder than regular
pork, is supernutritious
and vitality boosting because wild hogs feed mainly on red-
colored roots, said to be
beneficial blood-builders. People point out that meat-kind left
sitting out or from which
all vital fluid has drained (as when cooked for a long time in
soup) loses its nutritive
value and serves only as food to fill belly.
Sinews, another type of blood, comes from okra, fish eyes, and

other pale slimy foods,
such as egg white or the gelatinous portions of boiled cow skin
or hoof. Sinews refers
to, among other substances, the joint lubricant that biomedical
specialists call synovial
fluid, which resembles egg white. Sinews is essential for
smooth joint movements and
steady nerves. The functioning of the eyes depends on sinews
too: the eyes are filled
with it and glide left and right and open and shut with its aid.
Sinews, also associated
with procreation, is found in sexual effluvia and breast milk.
Many call sinews white
blood, as opposed to red.
People have less elaborate ideas about what edibles other bodily
components are made
of. Vitamins, contained in the strengthening tablets and tonics
that are popular and eas-
ily available, build and fatten. Some Jamaicans argue that meat-
kind builds muscles.
Most agree that corn meal builds flesh. A few suggest that milk
builds bones, at least
in children but not necessarily in adults whose bones have
already developed.
The most important part of the inner body is the belly, where
blood is made. This
big cavity or bag extends from just below the breast to the
pelvis. The belly is full of
bags and tube::;
tOP of the bod
its length. SOIT
improperly pn
and cause pro

In reviewing 11
sidy (1991) fOIl
are usually lal
scarcity, and
such is the C2:
Jamaica as s;
lescent girls
heavy eating
In Jamaic
tions involw
signals soci..
of life stress;
it and attrill
United Stat:
In the idll
each other.
them. Like
the breadtH
named Me
bottom; trn
as she apPJ
Food sll
ing, ends
cease to g;
other (oft:
goods anI I
her relati..
the dinne:
him at hii
Good
than mel:

where thi
both ph"
where tJl
melts oft
WheJ'
that she
taken ill
indicatlC
ZL
:cendants of
could man-
wash, hired
ranges, and
or by prox-
ld an estate
:see Sargent
lisiting rela-
erally made
)eople build
:distance of
ds turn into
Istances lost
ne body but
food means
Gt. It comes
i means the
~e and from
can be used

od of meat-
ers say that
~rnutritious
, said to be
from which
its nutritive
;limy foods,
news refers
all synovial
ements and
es are filled
) associated
news white
lts are made
lar and eas-
ds muscles.
1es, at least
ed.
made. This
Jy is full of
The Sweetness of Fat 259
bags and tubes, such as the baby bag and the urine tube. A main
conduit leads from the
top of the body through the belly to the bottom, with tributary
bags and tubes along
its length. Sometimes, tube and bag connections are not tightly
coupled. A substance
improperly propelled can meander off course, slide into an
unsuitable tube or bag, lodge,
and cause problems.

FOOD SHARING AND SOCIAL RELATIONS
In reviewing the social significance and health benefits of big
size cross-culturally, Cas-
sidy (1991) found that socially dominant individuals who are
enmeshed in sound relationships
are usually large. Bigness tends to ensure reproductive success
and survival in times of
scarcity, and plumpness is generally considered attractive.
According to Brink (1989),
such is the case in many of the West African societies from
which people were taken to
Jamaica as slaves. In these societies, those who can afford to do
so seclude their ado-
lescent girls in special "fattening rooms" and, after a period of
ritual education and
heavy eating, the girls emerge fat, attractive, and nubile.
In Jamaica, where a respected adult is called a big man or a big
woman, good rela-
tions involve food sharing, and people on good terms with
others are large. Weight loss
signals social neglect. A Jamaican seeing someone grow thin
wonders about the sorts
of life stresses that have caused the weight loss (rather than
offering congratulations for
it and attributing it to a "good" diet, as many middle- and
upper-class people in the
United States do).
In the ideal Jamaican world, mothers feed their children, kin
feed kin, and lovers feed
each other. Men involved with women put on pounds from the
meals their women serve
them. Likewise, women display the status of their relations with
their measurements;

food and culture The classic book that hel.docx

food and culture The classic book that hel.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to food and culture The classic book that hel.docx

Similar to food and culture The classic book that hel.docx (20)

More from gertrudebellgrove

More from gertrudebellgrove (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

food and culture The classic book that hel.docx