Food, Culture and Globalisation

Course Type	Course Code	No. Of Credits
Discipline Elective	NA	4

Course coordinator and team: Dr. Aakriti Grover

Summary: The highly symbolic nature of food makes it an ideal subject for studying it and thereby understanding the larger society. Food is not only a biological necessity for survival but it expresses meanings and values of communities and individuals. While every culture has its own distinct way of understanding and conceptualizing food it is also constantly shaped by new process and practices. The course will bring to the fore the culturally embedded nature of food in the context of flows and movements in an increasingly connected / globalised world. The focus of the course is to unpack the dense cultural codes in everyday food practices that are mediated by the global market and media, Social media being of particular interest.

Objectives

To understand, through the lens of food, the myriad and complex ways in which global processes and events affect our lives;
To understand how food and dietary habits / cultures travels, and the forces that influence such movements;
To understand the relationship between food, identity, health, and culture;
To sensitise students on how to avoid ‘ethnocentrism’ or stereotyping.

Expected Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the course, the student will be able to:

Critically analyse the many facets of food’
Critically analyse the complex connections between food, media, technology, identity.

Overall Structure:

Modules	Duration
Module 1: Global World & Movement of Food	2 weeks
Module 2: Food & Identity	2 weeks
Module 3: Seen, heard and felt; exploring food through experience (field visit)	1 week
Module 4: Media and food (including 1-week workshop)	3 weeks
Module 5: Food, Health & Body	2 weels
Module 6: Food & Ecology	2 weeks

Readings:

George, Susan and Nigel Paige. 2007.Food for Beginners. Orient Blackswan
Fox, Robin. “Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective.” Social Issues Research Centre. Ed. SIRC. SIRC, n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2014. http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxfood.pdf
Achaya, K.T.2001. Historical Dictionary of Indian Food. Oxford University Press
Collingham, L. 2017 Hungry Empire : How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the World. Random House: UK.
Nützenadel, A. and Trentmann, F. eds., 2008. Food and globalization: consumption, markets and politics in the modern world. Berg.
Anderson, E.N. 2014. Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture. NY and London: New York University Press. Ch. 1, “Obligatory Omnivores”
Douglas, Mary. 2003. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge. Chapter 3, “The Abominations of Leviticus”, PP. 42-59.
Kothari, Geeta. “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” The Kenyon Review 21.1 (1999): 6-14. JSTOR. Web. 2 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/4337801>.
Goody, Jack. 1982. Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 5, “Industrial Food: Towards the Development of a World Cuisine”, PP. 154-174
Baviskar, A. 2018. “Consumer Citizenship: Instant Noodles in India” in the journal Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies.

Shankar, S.2020.Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes. Speaking Tiger (chapter 1)
Devault, Marjorie. 1991. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. Chapter 1 “Doing Family Meals”. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sutton, David. 2001.
Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory. Chapter 1, “Sensory Memory and the Construction of ‘Worlds’”. New York: Berg, PP. 73-102
Rousseau, S. (2012). Food and social media: You are what you tweet. Rowman Altamira.
Holmberg, C., Chaplin, J. E., Hillman, T., & Berg, C. (2016). Adolescents' presentation of food in social media: An explorative study. Appetite, 99, 121-129.
Chan, A. (2003). ‘La grande bouffe’: Cooking Shows as Pornography. Gastronomica, 3(4), 46-53. doi:10.1525/gfc.2003.3.4.46
Lupton, D. (1996). Food, the Body and the Self. Sage.
Austin, Reshma. "PENCIL-LIKE THIN ICONS OF FEMINITY IN THE INDIAN
MEDIA." Global Media Journal: Indian Edition 3, no. 1 (2012)
Patel, R., 2012. Stuffed and starved: The hidden battle for the world food system. Melville House Pub.
Siegal, B. R.2018 .Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India. Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, D. and Redclift, M., 2002. Refashioning nature: food, ecology and culture. Routledge.
Harris, Marvin. 1998. Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland. [Previously published as The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig, 1985. Chapter 3, “The Riddle of the Sacred Cow”; Chapter 4, “The Abominable Pig”]
Outram, Alan K. 2007. “Hunter-Gatherers and the First Farmers: The Evolution of Taste in Prehistory.” In Food: The History of Taste, ed., Paul Freedman. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, PP. 35-61.

Pedagogy:

Instructional strategies: This course will use a combination of lectures, discussions, presentations, documentary/film screening, and field visits.
Special needs (facilities, requirements in terms of software, studio, lab, clinic, library, classroom/others instructional space; any other – please specify): Resources for organising field visit and organising food festival.

Expertise in AUD faculty or outside: External expertise
Linkages with external agencies (e.g., with field-based organizations, hospital; any others): No

Assessment structure (modes and frequency of assessments):

The course will have three assessment situations as part of continuous assessment policy of AUD: