Food and culture: stories of the past

The archaeology of food has increasingly attracted scholarly attention, encompassing a diverse set of data and approaches with immense potential to speak of the collective—often untold—stories of everyday choices, sustaining not only the physical, but also the social individual through time. While the two books under review are both part of this ever-expanding field, investigating food and foodways of the past, they are quite distinct in their scope.

Food Activism and Language in a Slow Food Italy Restaurant Menu

This essay explores how food activists in Italy purposely shape food and language to construct meaning and value. It is grounded in years of ethnographic fieldwork on food and culture in Italy and looks specifically at the Slow Food Movement. The essay explores language and food activism through a detailed unpacking of the text of a menu prepared for a restaurant dinner for delegates to the Slow Food National Chapter Assembly in 2009. The menu uses descriptive poetic language to construct an idealized folk cuisine steeped in local products, poverty, history, and peasant culinary traditions. As I explore the language of the menu and the messages communicated by the food, I ask if they intensify people’s activism, advance Slow Food’s goals of “good, clean and fair food,” and promote food democracy.

I Do So, Like Durian

Where does racism come from? How do experiences with other cultures change our views of race? In this work of philosophical short fiction, Holly, a young teenage girl, heads into Chinatown against her mother’s wishes to visit Jon, a teenage boy, she is interested in dating. He is working at his parents’ Chinese restaurant. She has taken public transportation to Chinatown with her mother knowing, and against her mother’s wishes. Her mother has a strong bias against the area and the people. Holly gets off the bus at the wrong place and gets lost, but friendly locals direct her the right way. She is amazed by the differences in food and culture she sees all around her and ends up buying a durian. Eventually, she finds the restaurant (still carrying the durian), and finds Jon working. Jon is surprised and slightly embarrassed to see Holly and explains to her she will not like taste of the durian. Holly is warmly welcomed by one of Jon’s relatives in the restaurant who agrees to take her in the back and show her out to prepare her exotic fruit.

(Korean-Tamil) Language and Cultural similarities, Maritime Trade between Early Historic Tamilakam and Korea

There are several similarities found between the Korean and Tamil culture of India that many people are unaware. The present article discusses the similarities in language, food, and culture. Probably the Iron Age trade relationship and spread of Buddhism from Tamil Nadu bound these two great maritime nations. Besides, evidence emerges from classical Tamil literature (Sangam period 600 BCE to 300 CE), archeological findings and anthropological discoveries found in Adichanallur, a pre-historic harbor site, indicate that people of Mongoloids race traveled to the ancient seaport of Korkai, Tamil Nadu and Tamil people may have traveled to Korea for trade or missionary activities. This could be the possible reason behind the language and cultural similarities between these two nations.