Project 2
Pick
a food and utilize talk/discourse/conversation as a research tool (though not
necessarily as your exclusive tool) to look at (some aspect of) its
preparation.
Although
one can look at foodways without dealing directly with discourse (i.e.,
what people say), it is in the realm of discourse that we find some of the most
useful and relevant cultural data concerning food, and some of the best
evidence for interpreting the meanings that may be said to reside in the
patterns of belief and behavior that are here referred to as foodways. This does not mean to imply that people
always say what they know, nor that they necessarily know what they say, so
interpretation of discourse data considers not only the face value of the data,
but also underlying, entailed, and hidden meanings as well.
This
project, as an ethnographic exercise, deals with the preparation aspect
of food and with discourse concerning and/or during the preparation of
some food(s) as it may elucidate one or more of the weekly topics considered in
the syllabus. Please select a food (or
group of foods) and investigate its preparation (for as long or short a section
of the activities surrounding its preparation as you like) by interviewing at
least some people, and supplementing this data, if desired, with recourse to
written resources.
For example, you might decide to deal with the preparation of tabouli, and to focus on the kitchen context of its preparation (when 2 or more persons are present) and on the kinds of conversation taking place that is relevant say to proportions of parsely to bulgar wheat or to teaching someone about making the dish, or something else. It may be that social structural variables could be revealed, or aspects of group identity. Or you might choose to investigate the preparation of the tamal(e) and focus on the symbolism of this Mesoamerican food. A human infant sized tamal(e) is made by Tzotzil Mayans in a ritual context and referred as the 'infant', suggesting that such a huge tamal(e) symbolizes an infant and references some attributes of a human infant in the ritual context, the better understanding of which could lead to a superior interpretation of the meaning of the ritual and of the tamal in that ritual context.
07/05/2012