Chapter 2: Food/ Culture (JCB)
I didn’t realize that the everyday practice of eating and drinking is immensely social and sociological until I read this chapter in the book. After only reading the first two pages about the sociology of food, I have not only learned but opened my eyes to things I never thought of. In most restaurants that I go to, snails are not on the money. Most of us are disgusted by snails and will try to do anything in order to get rid or kill them! Meanwhile, in different parts of the world like France, people praise them and will eat them at fancy expensive restaurants. I swear I learn something new every time I open this book. This chapter made me think about my food choices and how they relate to acceptable behaviors of the society I am involved in. Before I even read the chapter I wondered how food was going to be related to society. Different foods around the world have different meanings attached to them. I really connected with the text when it stated foods are often fetishized, I agree with Durkheim’s perspective: Food As Totem, Food does bring us together. For example, every Sunday me and my family come together and have Sunday Dinner faithfully. Food in my family has always been for the women to take care of, so I very much agree that society puts cooking as the job women should take care of instead of men. I never would’ve thought that the way I eat, what I used to eat it with, and how I ate food would be a part of a culture/cultures. I never knew the consumption of dogs has been going on since ancient times, I always thought that was something new, and strange. Food has always shown diversity. After reading about factory farming, I have a different outlook when it comes to animal products. Although I knew that the food industry was messed up, I was too ignorant to know the truth. It’s sickening to know what’s happening to not only the animals, but the workers, especially the young slaves overseas. Women in our society are still very unequal but I am starting to see more women becoming the main source of income for their family. I found it interesting that other cultures eat dogs. I would have never thought that humans eat dogs because my culture shows eating dogs as deviant. Just because we’re not used to it, doesn’t mean it’s not normal for others. Food is a lot more than just a necessity to live, it has become a part of who we are and what we represent. Some of the people in our world view it in one way of disgust while others view it completely opposite. We can learn a lot about food if we think sociologically about it. For example, our favorite food. My favorite food is enchiladas. Where does it come from? From what I know, it’s a Mexican dish since I know how to cook them. My mom learned from her mom and so on. It involves tortillas, chicken, fresh cheese, and sauce. It is very inexpensive to make.
Miner, Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (H)
In 1936, Professor Linton brought anthropologists the attention of the ritual of Nacirema. The culture of the ritual of Nacirema was highly characterized with habits of rich and natural habits, with a highly rich developed market economy. Their ritual activities are a portion of their day while the rest is spent on fruit labor. Most houses are wattle, daub construction and inside they have one or more shrines. A shrine room is the wealthiest. They have walls with stones, the focal point is a box or chest which is built in the wall while the poor have an imitation of it. Then medicine men give a charm in writing they only understand along with herbalists, but for that they must be rewarded. The charm is never disposed even after serving its purpose, instead they are placed in the charm-box of the household shrine along with other crafts of high value. As for respect, they bow their head as they enter the shrine box and they mingle different sorts of holy water. If they didn’t do the rituals, they believed that bad things would happen. They have many strange rituals in which they do. Professor Linton, discussed a distinguished body ritual which men can only perform. In every lunar month, they lack up made up in barbarity, in that ceremony women bake their heads in a small oven for an hour. As in sickness they have to take them to a temple, but when they are about to die they are also brought into the temple. As a result, he is talking about the American history. I learned a lot from this chapter and also found out how ignorant I am to other cultures around the world when it comes to food. For instance, I had no idea that people eat spiders in other cultures. I instantly thought to myself that that is just weird and I made a bad judgement. After reading a few pages, I realize how much ethnocentrism I used when I was reading this chapter. Just because it’s not a norm in our culture, I made a false judgement and thought in a negative way about eating spiders
Hall & Hall, The Sympathy in Everyday Life (H)
Communicating is a great necessity to be able to do. We can communicate with people who are verbal, sign language, body language, visual and much more. The first form of communication is the preverbal language which includes posture, gestures, facial expressions, costume, way someone walks, treatment of time and space, and material things. When the white middle-class American culture is listening to someone that person looks straight into the person’s eyes or at the face to let the person that he/she is listening. People also smile, nod, and raise eyebrows to let the speaker know they are interested in the conversation. Some people might misinterpret when using eye contact. Americans do not like when foreign people stare or hold a glance too long. For example, a man is with his wife at the store and a foreigner is staring at them for a long time, so the man would get mad because the foreigner was staring at his wife. There are three levels of consciousness and control Which are flirt blinking, the response of the eye itself, awareness and control sparkle in the eyes and, unconscious but learned behavior moving the eyes where they are directed. A psychologist did a study with the pupillary reflex. What he did was that he slipped some pictures of nude women in a stack of other photographs for his male assistant. Then the psychologist examined his assistant’s eyes, and the assistant made his pupillary smaller, and in another picture, he made them bigger. A common situation for many people is the use of the eyes on the streets and public. Many African American greet each other in public even though they do not know each other. When a white person passes by an African-American, the African-Americans eyes behavior tends to give an impression that they are not there. People in the northern European side do not use eye contact and people from the middle Eastern side like close personal contact. Some people like to have their own space, when someone is getting too close to them they feel uncomfortable. People who are stressed do not like people too close to them because they want their space to relax. When people use public transportation, they tend to have a certain space between one another, so each person can feel comfortable. People from different cultures are raised differently.
Clark, Sympathy in every Life (H)
We all have sympathy for someone in our lives at some point for different reasons. Clark describes culture in the introduction as how we think of ourselves, rules, emotions, how we should feel, and how we express ourselves is his meaning of culture. Sympathy is then described as a reflection of the culture we have learned. sympathy. First you have to think if someone is sympathy worthy which would be illness, loss of a loved one, crime victimization, and so on. Not only does the sympathizer look at this but the social status such as if someone is a child of an adult. For example, I have sympathy for people that have spent most of their time hospitalized because life is hard and spending time in hospital for health problems is hard. Also for those who have kids and cannot see them because they are too little. It’s difficult for their family members. I’ve experienced it in my family my mom all the time every year. Since I remember every year she spends weeks in it, but now with younger siblings it’s hard on all of us. Sacrifices have to be done, I dropped classes, focused on them, took care of them, cooked, cleaned them, took them to school and I went to school myself. I’ve also had other relatives hospitalized and it’s hard but when you have people you love around you it gets better. Giving and receiving sympathy depends on many factors. For example, how close your relationship may be, so if you are very close you may be able to give a hug or pat on the back but if not you may need to give them space. To first even be able to give sympathy you must have a sympathetic character, which comes from your social status.
JBC
Contrasting Marxist and Durkheimian perspectives
As I come from a Mexican Christian Catholic household, my parents are religions. Before every meal, we have to give thanks, we thank the lord Jesus Christ, people who from for growing, harvesting, and every process after that, and we thank my father for being a hardworking man and providing the house with money to live a better life. In the cooking process, only females are in the kitchen cooking. The Female role is to clean the house, cook and take care of kids. The man works outside `getting dirty”. My parents are very traditional, we don’t really go out to eat my mom tells me that we have food at home why eat out so we mainly eat at home. My mom cooks whatever type of Mexican food and she taught me. My favorites are enchiladas but I love poor Mexican food. For example, its egg with beans, eggs ham and sausage, potato with eggs, potato with the enchiladas chile, and food like that. And for food I’m personally not picky at all I will eat anything. I almost never eat alone but I do enjoy eating with my mom. Just that one thing I hate is that my mom eats at the end she is serving everyone warming up tortillas and from doing that she eats at the end and I want to help but she never lets me she will be telling me to eat before it gets cold or that she has everything under control
Socially Loco 