Download Free Food Ritual And Society Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Food Ritual And Society and write the review.

Surveys the archaeology of food: its methods and its themes (economics, politics, status, identity, gender, ethnicity, ritual, religion).
Introduction : The Social Life of Food -- Part I. Laying the Groundwork -- Framing Food Investigation -- The Practices of a Meal in Society -- Part II. Current Food Studies in Archaeology -- The Archaeological Study of Food Activities -- Food Economics -- Food Politics : Power and Status -- Part III. Food and Identity : The Potentials of Food Archaeology -- Food in the Construction of Group Identity -- The Creation of Personal Identity : Food, Body and Personhood -- Food Creates Society
Food has played a major role in funerary and memorial practices since the dawn of the human race. In the ancient Roman world, for example, it was common practice to build channels from the tops of graves into the crypts themselves, and mourners would regularly pour offerings of food and drink into these conduits to nourish the dead while they waited for the afterlife. Funeral cookies wrapped with printed prayers and poems meant to comfort mourners became popular in Victorian England; while in China, Japan, and Korea, it is customary to offer food not only to the bereaved, but to the deceased, with ritual dishes prepared and served to the dead. Dying to Eat is the first interdisciplinary book to examine the role of food in death, bereavement, and the afterlife. The contributors explore the phenomenon across cultures and religions, investigating topics including tombstone rituals in Buddhism, Catholicism, and Shamanism; the role of death in the Moroccan approach to food; and the role of funeral casseroles and church cookbooks in the Southern United States. This innovative collection not only offers food for thought regarding the theories and methods behind these practices but also provides recipes that allow the reader to connect to the argument through material experience. Illuminating how cooking and corpses both transform and construct social rituals, Dying to Eat serves as a fascinating exploration of the foodways of death and bereavement.
Food and drink, along with the material culture involved in their consumption, can signify a variety of social distinctions, identities and values. Thus, in Early Minoan Knossos, tableware was used to emphasize the difference between the host and the guests, and at Mycenaean Pylos the status of banqueters was declared as much by the places assigned to them as by the quality of the vessles form which they ate and drank. The ten contributions to this volume highlight the extraordinary opportunity for multi-disciplinary research in this area.
The way in which religious people eat reflects not only their understanding of food and religious practice but also their conception of society and their place within it. This anthology considers theological foodways, identity foodways, negotiated foodways, and activist foodways in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Original essays explore the role of food and eating in defining theologies and belief structures, creating personal and collective identities, establishing and challenging boundaries and borders, and helping to negotiate issues of community, religion, race, and nationality. Contributors consider food practices and beliefs among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, as well as members of new religious movements, Afro-Caribbean religions, interfaith families, and individuals who consider food itself a religion. They traverse a range of geographic regions, from the Southern Appalachian Mountains to North America's urban centers, and span historical periods from the colonial era to the present. These essays contain a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives, emphasizing the embeddedness of food and eating practices within specific religions and the embeddedness of religion within society and culture. The volume makes an excellent resource for scholars hoping to add greater depth to their research and for instructors seeking a thematically rich, vivid, and relevant tool for the classroom.
This timely and engaging text offers students a social perspective on food, food practices, and the modern food system. It engages readers’ curiosity by highlighting several paradoxes: how food is both mundane and sacred, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary global era, comes from everywhere but nowhere in particular. With a social constructionist framework, the book provides an empirically rich, multi-faceted, and coherent introduction to this fascinating field. Each chapter begins with a vivid case study, proceeds through a rich discussion of research insights, and ends with discussion questions and suggested resources. Chapter topics include food’s role in socialization, identity, work, health and social change, as well as food marketing and the changing global food system. In synthesizing insights from diverse fields of social inquiry, the book addresses issues of culture, structure, and social inequality throughout. Written in a lively style, this book will be both accessible and revealing to beginning and intermediate students alike.
Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Consumerism has established itself as a dominant lifestyle, but the reasons behind this are often unclear. This study revisits a large amount of diverse research, and argues that consumerism is a powerful ritual “machine” that can make up for the modern lack of values with new symbols and rituals. Consumerism made its claim between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, when the traditional symbolic world had ended and a new one had not yet emerged. Slowly but progressively, consumerism begun to develop new symbolic forms and new social rituals, becoming the basis for new mimetic behaviours. As nationalism has progressively declined, consumerism has permeated the entire social fabric. Supermarkets and shopping malls must be interpreted in the light of their ritual significance, as temples and holy cities of a new symbolic order. In the consumeristic era, many people are led to think and imagine in consumer terms, to identify themselves through consumption rituals. The impact of consumerism on culture, from literature to art, should not be underestimated. Many artists have tried to develop their aesthetics by triggering a dialectical, or openly critical, confrontation with consumerism. This book also takes into account the development of violence and the effects of consumerism on childhood and new generations. The book contains a preface by the German anthropologist Christoph Wulf, and the images illustrating the text are by Belgian artist Michel Couturier.