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Anthropology

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	As with all cultural institutions, there are various rules and customs surrounding food and eating. Many of these can be classified as either <OpenstaxTerm>food prescriptions</OpenstaxTerm>, foods that one should eat and are considered culturally appropriate, or <OpenstaxTerm>food proscriptions</OpenstaxTerm>, foods that are prohibited and not considered proper. These food regulations are social norms that connect production and consumption with the maintenance of cultural identity through food.
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	In the previous section, you read about the importance of Japanese short-grain rice as a symbol of Japanese identity. For many Japanese people, short-grain rice is a food prescription, something that they feel they should eat. Food prescriptions are common across cultures and nation-states, especially in regard to special holidays. There are many examples: turkey on Thanksgiving in the United States, corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, special breads, and candy figurines on Día de los Muertos in Mexico, saffron bread and ginger biscuits on St. Lucia Day in Sweden, or mutton curry and rice on Eid al-Fitr in Muslim countries. Food prescriptions are also common in the celebration of commemorative events, such as the cakes eaten at birthday parties and weddings, or the enchiladas and tamales prepared for a <OpenstaxEm>quinceañera</OpenstaxEm> celebrating a young Latin American woman’s 15th birthday. Most of these occasions involve <OpenstaxTerm>feasts</OpenstaxTerm>, which are elaborate meals shared among a large group of people and featuring symbolically meaningful foods.
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	One interesting example is the food eaten to mark the <OpenstaxTerm>Dragon Boat Festival</OpenstaxTerm> (Dragon Boat Festival, also called Duanwu), held in China on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar year. There are various origin stories for the Dragon Boat Festival. In one of them, the festival commemorates a beloved Chinese poet and government minister named <OpenstaxTerm>Qu Yuan</OpenstaxTerm> (ca. 340–206 BCE), who fell out of imperial favor and died by suicide, drowning himself. According to the story, people threw sticky rice dumplings into the river where he had drowned himself in order to distract the fish so that they could retrieve his body and give him a proper burial. The most important Dragon Boat food is <OpenstaxEm>zongzi</OpenstaxEm>, a sticky rice dumpling with different fillings, but the feast also traditionally includes eel, sticky rice cakes, boiled eggs, <OpenstaxEm>jiandui</OpenstaxEm> (a wheat ball covered in sesame seeds), pancakes with fillings, and wine.
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<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00002" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/a1669eb7d97fd6e0be132c2ca377ece94be5224d" alt="Two triangular-shaped packets of food on a plate, wrapped in bamboo leaves and tied with string." mediaType="image/jpeg" width="800" height="600" />
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	<strong>Figure 14.10</strong> Zongzi, a sticky rice dumpling, wrapped in bamboo leaves, prepared for the Dragon Boat Festival. Festival foods are typically associated with specific ritual events. (credit: “Dragon Boat Festival Zongzi” by Evan Wood/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
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	Food proscriptions, also called <OpenstaxTerm>food taboos</OpenstaxTerm>, are also common across cultures and contribute to establishing and maintaining a group’s identity. Often, these rules and regulations about what not to eat originate in religious beliefs. Two examples are the vegetarianism practiced by many Hindus, which is grounded in the spiritual principle of <OpenstaxEm>ahimsa</OpenstaxEm> (nonviolence in relation to all living things), and <OpenstaxEm>kashrut</OpenstaxEm>, a Jewish principle that forbids mixing meat and dairy foods or eating pork or shellfish. Sometimes food proscriptions are active for limited periods of time. For many Christians, especially Catholics, the 40 days of Lent, a period of religious reflection commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert, are a time when people give up certain foods or drinks to make a symbolic sacrifice. For many Catholics, this means fasting (withholding a measure of food) throughout the period and/or totally abstaining from meat on the special days of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday:
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		For members of the Latin Catholic Church, the norms on fasting are obligatory from age 18 until age 59. When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. The norms concerning abstinence from meat are binding upon members of the Latin Catholic Church from age 14 onwards. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops n.d.)
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	Muslims observe <OpenstaxTerm>Ramadan</OpenstaxTerm>, a month-long commemoration of the prophet Muhammad receiving the revelations of the Quran, by fasting every day from sunup to sundown. The Islamic fast entails a prohibition on food and drink, including water. Every evening after sundown, Muslims eat a large meal that include fruits, vegetables, and dates to rehydrate for the next day’s fast.
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	Some food prohibitions are customary and tied more to ancient cultural traditions than religion. Many food prohibitions pertain to meat. Among several East African groups, there is a prohibition against eating fish of any kind. This is called the <OpenstaxEm>Cushitic fish taboo</OpenstaxEm> because the prohibitions are found among many, but not all, cultural groups whose languages are part of the Cushite family, such as the Somali, Masaai, and Bantu peoples. Horsemeat was historically consumed infrequently in the United States until it was outlawed in 2005, primarily because of toxins in the meat related to the butchering process. Even before then, horsemeat in mainstream US society was a food prohibition. However, it is consumed throughout Europe, where there are butchers solely devoted to handling horsemeat.
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<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00003" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/0a4f188d009bde4708ed2b6eed601c0897624d99" alt="Butcher shop window with cuts of meat visible in a display case behind the glass. The sign on the window reads, Ma Celleria Equina." mediaType="image/jpeg" width="600" height="800" />
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	<strong>Figure 14.11</strong> A horse butcher shop in Italy. In many European countries, horsemeat is processed separately from other meats and sold at specialized butcher shops. (credit: Schellack at English Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)
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	An interesting case of food rules and regulations across cultures is <OpenstaxTerm>cannibalism</OpenstaxTerm>, the act of eating an individual of one’s own species. Although we do not usually think of human flesh as a menu item, in some cultures it is considered a kind of food, typically eaten as symbolic nutrition and identity. U.S. cultural and medical anthropologist Beth <OpenstaxTerm>Conklin</OpenstaxTerm> (1995) and Brazilian cultural anthropologist Aparecida <OpenstaxTerm>Vilaça</OpenstaxTerm> (2002) conducted research among the Wari’ of western Amazonia in Brazil and found that prior to evangelization by Christian missionaries in the 1960s, the Wari’ practiced two different types of cannibalism: <OpenstaxTerm><OpenstaxEm>endocannibalism</OpenstaxEm></OpenstaxTerm>, or eating members of one’s own cultural group, and <OpenstaxTerm><OpenstaxEm>exocannibalism</OpenstaxEm></OpenstaxTerm>, or eating those who are “foreign” or outside of one’s cultural group. Each form of cannibalism was associated with its own beliefs, practices, and symbolism.
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	The <OpenstaxTerm>Wari’</OpenstaxTerm> belief system is based on the principle that only the Wari’ are real people. All non-Wari’ others, people and animals alike, are not humans and thus can be considered meat (Vilaça 2002, 358). When speaking of the practice recognized by anthropologists as exocannibalism, the Wari’ did not consider themselves to be practicing cannibalism at all; they saw non-Wari’ people as not fully human and classified them as a type of prey. Endocannibalism was understood differently. Endocannibalism among the Wari’ was practiced as part of the mourning process and understood as a way of honoring a Wari’ person who had died. Following a death, the immediate family of the deceased arranged for non-kin and relatives by marriage to dress and prepare the body by dismembering, roasting, and eating virtually all of it. Consuming the flesh of the deceased was considered the ultimate act of respect, as the remains were not buried in the ground but in the living bodies of other Wari’. Once eaten by non-family Wari’, the deceased could transform from humans into spirits and eventually return as prey animals to provide food for the living. For Conklin, this practice indicates <OpenstaxEm>mutualism</OpenstaxEm>, or the relationship between people and animals through the medium of food and eating:
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		For Wari’, ... the magic of existence lies in the commonality of human and animal identities, in the movements between the human and nonhuman worlds embodied in the recognition through cannibalism of human participation in both poles of the dynamic of eating and being eaten. (Conklin 1995, 95)
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	Cannibalism has been associated with many cultures, sometimes accompanying warfare or imperial expansion, as in the case of the Aztecs (Isaac 2002), and sometimes as a means of showing respect for and establishing kinship with the deceased (see Lindenbaum 1979 for an example in Papua New Guinea). Although there have been scholarly arguments around the nature and frequency of cannibalism (Arens 1979), there is increasing evidence that this was a practiced norm in many human societies. Some religions also incorporate symbolic cannibalism as a way of identifying with the deity.
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	Food can be deeply symbolic and plays an important role in every culture. Whether foods are prescribed or prohibited, each culture constructs meanings around what they define as food and the emotional attachments they have to what they eat. Consider your own plate when you next sit down to eat. What meanings are attached to the different foods that you choose? What memories do different foods evoke?
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14.3.2 Food Prescriptions and Proscriptions

1 What Is Anthropology?

1.1 The Study of Humanity, or "Anthropology Is Vast"

1.1.1 The Heart of Anthropology: Central Narrative and Commitments

1.1.2 Central Commitment #1: Exploring Sociocultural Diversity

1.1.3 Central Commitment #2: Understanding How Societies Hold Together

1.1.4 Central Commitment #3: Examining the Interdependence of Humans and Nature

1.2 The Four-Field Approach: Four Approaches within the Guiding Narrative

1.2.1 Biological Anthropology

1.2.2 Archaeology

1.2.3 Cultural Anthropology

1.2.4 Linguistic Anthropology

1.2.5 How the Four Fields Work Together: The Example of Race

1.3 Overcoming Ethnocentrism

1.3.1 Enculturation and Ethnocentrism

1.3.2 Primitivism and Orientalism

1.4 Western Bias in Our Assumptions about Humanity

1.4.1 Primitivism and Orientalism in Popular Culture

1.4.2 The Bias of Backwardness

1.5 Holism, Anthropology’s Distinctive Approach

1.5.1 Society as an Integrated Whole

1.5.2 Sources of Contradiction, Conflict, and Change

1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism

1.6.1 Relativism Is Not “Anything Goes”

1.6.2 Morality, Activism, and Cultural Relativism

1.7 Reaching for an Insider’s Point of View

1.7.1 The Challenge of Representing Others

1.7.2 Collaborative Methods of Representation

1.7.3 Working across Cultures toward Common Goals

1.7.4 Suggested Readings

2 Methods: Cultural and Archaeological

2.1 Archaeological Research Methods

2.1.1 Archaeological Techniques

2.1.2 Archaeological Dating Methods

2.2 Conservation and Naturalism

2.2.1 Early Efforts

2.2.2 Salvage Anthropology

2.2.3 Museum Collections

2.2.4 Interpretation and Voice

2.3 Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.1 The Development of Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.2 Perspective and Interpretation in Ethnography

2.4 Participant Observation and Interviewing

2.4.1 Participant Observation

2.4.2 Interviewing Informants

2.4.3 Ethical Considerations

2.5 Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

2.5.1 Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Information

2.5.2 Modeling

2.5.3 The Science of Anthropology

2.6 Collections

2.6.1 Archives

2.6.2 Three-Dimensional Collections

2.6.3 Ownership

2.6.4 Suggested Readings

3 Culture Concept Theory: Theories of Cultural Change

3.1 The Homeyness of Culture

3.2 The Winkiness of Culture

3.3 The Elements of Culture

3.3.1 Culture Is What We Make

3.3.2 Culture Is What We Do

3.3.3 Culture Is What We Think

3.4 The Aggregates of Culture

3.4.1 Symbols

3.4.2 Ritual

3.4.3 Social Structure

3.5 Modes of Cultural Analysis

3.5.1 Evolution, Adaptation, and Historical Particularism

3.5.2 Functionalism

3.5.3 Structuralism

3.5.4 Ontology

3.6 The Paradoxes of Culture

3.6.1 Paradox 1: Culture Is Continuous, but It Changes

3.6.2 Paradox 2: Culture Is Bounded but Mobile

3.6.3 Paradox 3: Culture Is Consensual but Contested

3.6.4 Paradox 4: Culture Is Shared, but It Varies

3.6.5 Suggested Readings

4 Biological Evolution and Early Human Evidence

4.1 What Is Biological Anthropology?

4.1.1 Looking to the Deep Past

4.1.2 Exploring What It Means to Be Human

4.2 What’s in a Name? The Science of Taxonomy

4.2.1 Defining the Science of Taxonomy

4.2.2 Defining a Species

4.3 It’s All in the Genes! The Foundation of Evolution

4.3.1 The Units of Life

4.3.2 Gregor Mendel and the Laws of Heredity

4.3.3 Mendelian Inheritance in Humans

4.4 Evolution in Action: Past and Present

4.4.1 Early Evolutionists and the Fixity of Species

4.4.2 Charles Darwin’s Role in Changing Views of the Natural World

4.4.3 Understanding Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection

4.5 What Is a Primate?

4.5.1 What Is a Primate?

4.5.2 Primate Behavioral Variation

4.5.3 Explaining Primate Success

4.5.4 Primate Classification and Taxonomy

4.6 Origin of and Classification of Primates

4.6.1 Understanding Concepts of Time

4.6.2 Fossils and Dating Methods

Question	Answer
the act of eating an individual of one’s own species.	cannibalism
elaborate meals of symbolically meaningful foods shared among large groups of people.	feasts
foods that one should eat and are considered culturally appropriate.	food prescriptions
foods that are prohibited and are not considered proper as food; also called food taboos.	food proscriptions