ANTH1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Post-Marxism
17 May 2018
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Week 6: FOOD, RELATIONSHIPS AND KINDS OF PEOPLE (2): Food
• Cultural Politics of Chinese Food:
o People make eating their heaven
o Humanity takes food as the highest good
o Food as a metaphor for society
• Eating has a history and a geography:
o • 1949 ➢ Socialist Era: Urban vs Rural households
• Who eats the states grai?
o Great Leap Forward (1957-1959)
o Cultural Revolution (ca. 1966-1976)
• rusticatio oveet – 17 million youth
o ‘efor ad Opeig: post-socialis
• Early era (early 1980s)
• Later era (mid-late 1990s-today)
• Food, Morality, Politics:
o Food is ot just food!
• WHAT, WHERE, HOW MUCH, and with WHOM you eat is a MORAL (ethical) issue
• How well the state feeds its people is a moral and political judgement on state
legitimacy
▪ Peoples physical well being (ie. how well they eat) is a symbol of the success
– and legitimacy - of the government.
• Communal Eating - Early Shenzhen:
o Early arrivers Shezhe pioeers
o Utopian nationalism, symbolised by eating together in cheap outdoor dining spots
(serving southern food)
o Food symbolised the economic development that would be shared with the entire
nation.
• Personal Dining Today:
o Second-generation immigrants seek opportunity and wealth
o Choosing from a menu symbolises individual desires accommodated by the market
o Individuals constituted by CHOICE
o Culinary fads mark cosmopolitan status
• Food and the Cultural Construction of the person?
o In China/Shenzhen, the good life has food as a central component.
• Food is both material AND symbolic.
o How food is shared/distributed marks social relations
• Kinship (ex: the Hua) and the larger polity (Shenzhen)
o Restaurant menus as metaphor/model for the cultural construction of the self here and
now.
• CHOICE as cetral to oder persohood
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