What Clam Thermometers Tell Us About Past Climates
It’s mid-August, 2017, but the temperature in Unalaska, one of the Aleutian Islands that trails off of the western Alaskan coast, is a brisk 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Christine…
Tag: food
Maya Milpa Workshop at OSU’s Waterman Farm
Last Friday and Saturday, we hosted a workshop that invited students, faculty, and staff from Ohio State (as well as new friends from Kenyon College) to learn about…
Diagnosis where? Testing Pigs and Humans for T. solium cysticercosis in Uganda by Rebekah Thompson
Two live pigs being transported to a local butcher in Mukono district, Uganda Taenia solium is a zoonotic disease shared between humans and pigs. Humans become infected with…
Leigh Chavez-Bush’s “Chefs, Cuisine, and Convergence”
My dissertation explores media networks within the Chicago culinary industry. At three fieldwork sites I conducted participant observation and employee ethnography with media producers, chefs, and sof…
Bonobos Spied Sharing a Feast
Bonobos congregate around a male bonobo holding an African breadfruit to get a share of the meal. Barbara Fruth/LuiKotale Bonobo Project People are weird—at least compared to other…
How Chinese Immigrants Built—and Lost—a Shellfish Industry
Abalone, which were once abundant in the coastal waters of California, are now primarily cultivated on farms. Universal Images Group/Getty Images At a sleepy outpost in the Sierra…
Thesis Review: Placing the Apple
Please note: I am soliciting reviews of recent dissertations in the Anthropology of Food. So if you have written a recent thesis or would like to review one, you…
Book Review: Food, Power and Agency by Jürgen Martschukat and Bryant Simon
In Food, Power and Agency, editors Jürgen Martschukat and Bryant Simon bring together contributors to explore how food, power and agency contribute to the formation of ‘culinary capital’ a…
Cultivating Vitality
Tanzanians are redefining health and the forms of governance that might be promoted in its name. Tanzanians are witnessing the emergence a new configuration of plant-based therapies that…
Book Review: The Sociology of Food: Eating and the Place of Food in Society by Jean-Pierre Poulain
In The Sociology of Food: Eating and the Place of Food in Society, Jean-Pierre Poulain offers an account of how food has emerged as a new field within sociological…
Fish by Jennifer Lee Johnson
If you’ve seen Hubert Sauper’s (2004) documentary film Darwin’s Nightmare you may remember the stark contrast he draws between the sterile disassembly line of a factory producing Nile…
Thesis Review and Interview: Tacos, Gumbo, and Work
Photograph: Fernando Lopez Please note: As Associate Editor, I am soliciting reviews of recent dissertations in the Anthropology of Food. So if you have written a recent thesis or…
Can Rat Bones Solve an Island Mystery?
When I ask her “So how big are the rats?,” E. Grace Veatch, a graduate student in zooarchaeology at Emory University, smiles and immediately holds her hands apart…
Jeremy Morris: Cheesed off, but not because of sanctions: Russians adapt to immiseration as global capital increases its grip
With the constant, confusing, and often misinformed media noise around Russia, you would be forgiven for believing a number of unhelpfully distorting half-truths: that Russia has been a…
2017 Thomas Marchione Award Winner!
We are very happy to announce the 2017 winner of the Thomas Marchione Food-as-a-Human-Right Student Award. This annual prize is awarded to a student whose work continues and…
Spirit, Monster, Table and Tongue
By Caroline Merrifield (Yale) My friend Zhang is one of the head chefs at the fine-dining farm-to-table restaurant in Hangzhou, China, where I did most of my dissertation…
Food Is About Far More Than Bodily Sustenance
In many societies around the world, food is a deeply meaningful part of social and cultural life. Shari Lewis/Associated Press Fatima,* a refugee from Somalia who is a…
Can Medical Anthropology Solve the Diabetes Dilemma?
Social factors contribute to a person’s risk for developing diabetes and shape choices surrounding the management of the disease. Nivaldo Júnior/ALES/Flickr Mary (a pseudonym) was 18 year…
Cooking Up an International Market for Quinoa
The bright-red cuchi wila quinoa has a bitter-tasting outer coating, called saponin, that protects the plant from predators and houses a black seed. This heritage variety of quinoa…
Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up?
Most animals would never need braces even if they could get them. Monica y Garza/Flickr This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative…
Uncovering Ancient Clues to Humanity’s First Fires
Although researchers don’t agree on when humans first gained control over the use of fire, they do not dispute the fact that fire played an important role in…
Powerful supermarkets push the cost of food waste onto suppliers, charities
Our research into the issue of corporate social responsibility and wastage of fresh fruit and vegetables has identified a number of tensions and contradictions, despite leading Australian supermarkets…
Ebola Prevention Caught in the Bushmeat Trap
Questions about the safety of eating “bushmeat” were front and center during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. SarahTz/Flickr In 2015, as an Ebola epidemic raged in…
The Gig Economy Strikes Back: Deliveroo in Brighton
by Rebecca Prentice May 1, 2017: On a rainy evening in Brighton, more than two hundred people took to the streets to protest economic precariousness. The ‘Precarious May…