Essay #5: Understanding a culture through its "foodways"

Studying foodways – what foods people eat and how they produce, acquire, prepare, and consume them – is the best way to gain deep understanding of a culture.

Researching the culture of a people involves learning as much as possible about that people.  Food procurement, preparation, and consumption would be important topics to examine, but a focus on food is not the best way to gain insight into a culture.

When anthropologists make a study of a culture they examine the behavior of the people in that culture and they study items such as beliefs, customs, relationships, economy, politics, and art.  By examining these at length, anthropologists can begin to comprehend the culture, but it is debatable how much study is needed for a “deep understanding” of that culture, or if true understanding of another culture is even possible. Franz Boaz, a pioneer of modern anthropology, introduced cultural relativism: the idea that people observing another culture will always see it through the lens of their own culture, and will judge it based on the norms with which they are familiar.  To overcome this bias, anthropologists sometimes live and interact with the people of a culture over an extended period of time.  Participation in obtaining, preparing and eating food helps to understand the culture, but it would only make up a part of all the behavioral patterns of the culture.

An anthropologist would have difficulty using food practices as a basis to understanding a culture because two distinct societies living in the same geographical area might have similar food because of the plants and animals that are available.  Furthermore, circumstances such as drought, blight, or many environmental factors might alter the availability of certain foods during the period of time that the anthropologist is living in the culture. Compared to food availability, it is less likely that the language, social customs, and relationships will vary in the short term.  That is why it would invaluable to study all aspects of the culture in depth.

The culture of a people is made up of a large number of behaviors.  All of these must be observed and sometimes participated in to understand a culture.  Anthropologists would use the study of food procurement, preparation, and consumption to gain insight into a culture, but would give equal or greater importance to items such as language, customs, and societal roles.