Food and Power in the Western World
Studying food is the ultimate pathway to understanding how we construct our world: our diets, the processes through which we acquire food, the behaviour surrounding the preparation and consumption of food is culturally and socially constructed. Food in Western countries has come under increasing scrutiny due to concerns over nutrition, eating disorders and body image. Anthropologists explain cultural constructions of gender, class, nature, religion, morality, health, and social order through studying food rules and specifically the taboos surrounding them.
Audrey Richards (1932) is renowned as one of the foremost ground-breaking social anthropologists to merge the rigid boundaries between the natural and social sciences. An avid student of Malinowski’s, Richards was eager to learn his teachings on how social behaviour cannot be explained by scientific theories, only by human sentiments or instincts. In her early text she outlined the different stances from which nutrition needs to be approached: sociological, nutritional, physiological, economic, psychoanalytical; revealing that nutrition was not dictated by biology alone, but satisfied an entire system of needs through institutional and social problems. This is highlighted by the following quote:
Few tribes, however primitive, live entirely from hand to mouth, and even the Bushmen of Australia or the Kalahari desert perform magic rites to relieve their anxiety, and to reassure themselves as to the safety of their food supply. (Richards, 1932, p.9)
Commensalism (the sharing of food) is the ultimate power to determining sociability by maintaining and forming social groups. Thus, the refusal of food signifies denial of relationship. In many Asian cultures, the denial of food is socially constructed to refusal of acceptance and general hospitality. Marcel Mauss (1967) portrayed in his exemplary study The Gift — how gift exchange and reciprocation play a major role in maintaining relationships and affirming believes that the gift involves a tripartite obligation: to give, to receive, and to repay. Refusal to give or receive is a vast insult that severs relationships. Refusal to repay signifies inability to do so and loss of face. Giving to others is the basis of power, for recipients are beholden to donors. (Counihan, 1999, p.95). Additionally, this underpinning social concept correlates to non–Western societies, like that of The Wamira people in Papua New Guinea. Their consumption is represented through emotional feelings, not implications of nutritional deprivation, which seems to be the direction of the Western world:
For a Wamiran, the dynamics of social relationships are expressed, interpreted, and manipulated in terms of food. Metaphorical statements made about the presence or absence of food convey nuances about social cooperation or conflict.(Kahn, 1986, p.34)
Eating in the domestic world lies at the heart of wider social relations — at meals we create family and friendships by sharing food tastes, values and ourselves. Parent’s control of family meals offers nurturing through food; home-cooked meals infer concepts of offering and receiving, thus eating is a sense of being loved. With our increasingly hectic, fast-paced lifestyles, fast-food has become convenience to suppress hunger and the need to ‘love ourselves quickly’ through microwave meals or take-aways; leaving us with a sense of guilt when we don’t achieve this, which in turn can lead to extreme periods of either binging or starvation altogether. In most societies, (especially amongst primitive cultures where food is central to family organisation) the mother is fundamental to the power of food, bearing her responsible to happiness, well-being and emotional security of the family.
Extensive documentaries aired on television have attempted to examine the problems of childhood patterns of eating; implementing the one-dimensional knowledge of nutritionists and doctors; failing to comprehend that the complexity of food needs to be approached at a more holistic level, reserved of anthropologists. For example, eating together as a family is proven essential to the verbal and social development of children’s ‘table-talk.’ Parents exercise food as an emotional power. Family meal time allows parents to exercise their disciplinarily responsibilities; teaching children: manners, self-regulation, portion control, reward, choice and everyday communication skills. However, problems arise when children are reluctant to participate in talk at the table or lack willingness to try different foods. To deal with such difficulties, anthropologists understand that regimes and procedures need to be maintained:
These regimes are mainly in line with the advice of experts in feeding children, who warn not to force children to eat (Hirschmann and Zaphiropoulous, 1985; Turner, 1986; Baker and Henry, 1987). Management practices around food therefore position parents in regard to discourses on the ‘right’ ways of feeding children and the right ways to manage the family meal should be efficient and enjoyable. (Coveney, 2000, p.131)
Awareness of how eating is defined and evaluated in the U.S. is of great importance to anthropologists, psychologists, nutritionists, bio-medics, and other professionals; imperative to the success of nutrition education programmes; depending on their ability to fit into cultural patterns. With this in mind, school dinners, like family meals are essential to the health of today’s youth. Government policy and resources in recent years in the UK has been directed towards improving public awareness over healthy eating. These polices have particularly targeted schools and the quality of school dinners was raised and scrutinised. Jamie Oliver’s on-going battle against British school dinners highlights the growing concern amongst food, power and eating disorders;
It’s true that their fast-food culture and huge portions have led to massive health problems. But anyone with half a brain knows that how people feed their families is where the real story is. (Oliver, 2009, p.10)
Food is essential to well being, and as we can see, emotional security. Eating good food enhances our emotional state making us feel euphoric and so helps us to maintain and create positive social relationships. As was illustrated earlier, Wamirans of Papua New Guinea fear how greed can threaten the fabric of community through promoted food sharing and feasting communally. U.S. students also understand the importance of the control of greed, but in terms of individualism and personal control. Students are vital to study as they transfixed between youth and adulthood; expressing self-control and individual choice, two underpinning food rules of Euro-American cultural values. They comprehend that success derives from an individual’s hard work and taking control of one’s life, which is reflected in their food rules, hiding relations of class, race and gender stratification that they uphold. Rather than seeing that privilege defines worth, students know that worth is earned by those who privilege. Restrain in eating is seen as a path to higher attractiveness, status, morality, and dominance, as one student expressed:
“I believe that to become and remain thin, in a society of excess such as ours, takes a great deal of self-knowledge and control. It seems so easy to give in to the powers of the palate and eat our way to ecstasy while ignoring our self-image and the image we present to others…when non-thin people look at those who are thin there is usually resentment at what they are not and those who represent this.” (Counihan, 1999 p.121)
Western culture has vastly evolved over the eight centuries but the fact that women have persistently refused food means fasting is a crucial aspect to unveil. The main driving forces are: the identification of women with food, Judeo-Christian ideology, patriarchal political and economic structure, and female organisation (limits of female autonomy and potential). Perceptions of what constitutes a healthy body vary across cultures and are informed largely in the West by bio-medicine. In the West, certain images of ‘perfect’ bodies are propounded at us, pressuring us to conform. Western fasting differs from other types of fasting in that it involves highly symbolic alteration of women’s universal relationship to food whilst being anti social, endless, dangerous and destructive. Specifically, in the US and UK there is a subtle shift from a highly symbolic use of food to personal relationships with food for fuel, with regard to concerns of nutrition and body image. It is best understood as a multi-dimensional behaviour, interplay of ideological, economical, political and social factors.
Western women’s fasting can only be understood from an anthropological perspective when it is studied in relation to a wider, cultural picture (Richards 1939 & Kahn 1986). This cross cultural approach to anthropological epistemology helps understand fasting of non-Western cultures and seeks out curious or familiar behaviour worldwide and examines conditions that incite or deter extreme eating conditions. Essentially, through the culture of foodways (how we use food) and other factors like power structure, public decision making, and child rearing. Mainly amongst women, eating disorders are thought to emerge out of a person’s desire to control their bodies in the hope that this will address general feelings of powerlessness in their everyday lives. In addition, food holds meaning according to what it does to the body in terms of weight and gain. Women are responsible for food preparation, consumption and distribution cross-culturally. They epitomise the ideology of primary nurturers through feeding families, further during pregnancy and lactation, women are highly symbolic of identification with food.
Gender matters in food-centred activities, as it does in structuring human societies their histories, ideologies, economic systems and political structure. Power is exerted through accepted norms of who has the right to control or pass judgement on the eating habits of others. Men in Counihan’s study were thought by women to exert significant control over their eating habits and many women found it intimidating to eat in front of men. This process of passing judgement on food intake of others acts as a form of social control and in this case it operates to secure the gender hierarchy that sanctions the authority of men over women. Counihan goes on to say women were much more likely than men to be the targets of judgemental comments made by both men and women on topics related to eating (p.125).
From a historical context, holy fasting began in Medieval times when women saw themselves as food; identification with Christ who became food in the Mass to redeem humanity. Modern anorexics strive for thinness and self control through food denial, playing on similar concepts of food consisting as a vehicle for morality and stratification (Bruch 1987). Like Medieval counterparts, Western women convince themselves that hunger is pleasurable and valuable, offering them the ability to feel pure and clean again. In the quest for perfection, women concentrate on denying self through disconnecting and transcending their mundane lifestyles. Mary Douglas underscores this perception of food manipulation in forming social boundaries and their contravention:
Since there is little legislation for consumption, and since it is supposed to be an area of free and unconstrained choice, it will be difficult, unless by anthropological comparisons, to identify any simple social mechanisms that harnesses consumption to social exclusion. (Douglas & Isherwood, 1979, p.82)
Douglas also asserted that the human body is a property of society, with body control being an expression of social control. The problem this leads to is eating disorders in Western secular societies, so prevalent in the USA and UK. In Western cultures, individuals control appetites by their own choice, affirming their spirituality, discipline and morality. Culture postulates dominance of mind over sense, associating women with body. The Western Judeo-Christian myth of Adam and Eve, illustrates taming of the biological needs in human nature. Adam is depicted as the doubting mind, tempted by the flesh of Eve. Women are identified with nature therefore their sensual body must be controlled.
In Western secular societies, power of body control implies self-righteousness and moral superiority. To exemplify, amongst the most successful company directors are thin dainty women, whom we expect to succeed because they infer the greatest self-control. Our dire need for food translates as a mechanism to exert power, thus there is no more absolute sign of powerlessness than hunger. Nutritional values make us all vulnerable as individualisation of food is how we typically express ourselves. The concept of ‘healthy’ in the Western World and America has in fact become a code word for calorie intake (nutrition). This intrinsic characteristic of food represents the influence of the scientific mode of thinking on popular ideology. Rules for good food involve the notion of a balanced diet that is defined not in terms of hot and cold, male and female, sweet and savoury or raw and cooked foods which are the symbolic paradigms used by non-Western cultures to shape cultural and social attitudes towards food. But rather in terms of the basic four food groups, defining according to their complementary nutrients.
Americans and Western Europeans cultivate their bodies as reflections of individuality and focus on thinness as a symbol of self-control and power. In many cultures a similar standard of body morphology as the Fijan and Jamaicans apply to both men and women. However, in America and much of Western Europe women are held to more stringent standards of thinness than men even though women have greater biological propensity to be overweight. For US and Western European own dissatisfaction with their body size and shape is yet another expression of and contributor to their subordination. Women’s internalised oppression is manifest in the self-hatred directed as the body and the enormous amount of female energy devoted to improving the body, energy that could be spent in many other positive productive ways. Challenges to conceptions of beauty and body image are the only way to change these issues yet control of food is gateway to also reining society:
Bodies are intimately connected with power, and while brute strength is no longer generally necessary to the maintenance of social position it is still commonly used as a means of controlling women both in the private and public arena. (Scott & Morgan, 1993 p.10)
Women’s normative discontent with their body image is further complicated by the bombardment of thin desirable images of women portrayed in the media, art and fashion industries. Globally, the female body sells more with gendered body images in advertising; what we consider to be beautiful and attractive is socially and culturally constructed and beamed at us through a number of mechanisms. These images carry messages not just about what is sexually desirable but also who is most likely to succeed and be wealthy, in turn messages about the relative superiority of certain ethnic and gender groups is conveyed. The Indian skin lightening and hair straightening industry are a similar process, rooted on socially constructed ideas of ideal body image and beauty that to be fairer skinned means that one will be more beautiful and successful.
This link between thinness and art is even evident amongst art students in Western European societies. Through mere observation, there is an accelerating increase in the desirability for male art and fashion students to psychically become like the aesthetic dainty subjects depicted in their muses’ work. Amongst women in Western societies, anorexia is perceived as an element of envy amongst women. Feminine thinness denotes success through a deep sense of self control which is culturally constructed. However, these women are also subject to little social status for they are dismissed for their interest in such trivial things like clothes and make-up:
To succeed in the provision of a beautiful or sexy body gains a woman attention and some admiration but little real respect and rarely any social power. (Weitz, 2003 p.35)
Standing in stark contrast, at the other end of the spectrum, a much greater concern is the rising issue of obesity. This spectrum of anorexia and obesity is more like a hierarchy of opportunity for success, which fulfils the expectations we socially construct. In this form of social control, we uphold the hierarchy ourselves, (whilst influencing others to also confine) rather than breaking with society. The misogynistic nature of many Western women’s obsessive fear of fat and restrictive eating shows up sharply when contrasted with the empowering attitudes and habits prevailing in other cultures. In the majority of cultures where data exists plumpness is preferred, especially for women, as it is associated with fertility, hardness, power, good nurture and love. This is most clearly displayed in the Jamaican culture where voluptuous women are depicted as fertile, motherly figures. Further, Fijans prefer a plump body because they define it as a product and symbol of care, generosity and social cohesion.
In the Western world and U.S. obesity offers a moral index which infers we are eating the wrong foods but this issue is very much complicated. The statistics on obesity show that lower class people whom hold the least power, are the largest socio-economic group vulnerable to becoming overweight. Counihan agrees that there is a prevailing view in many Western countries that poor people are more likely to eat junk. Cheap convenience food is thought to be purchased and consumed in higher quantities by the poor or working class. Perhaps the cheaper foods are the lowest in nutritional value or simply lack of knowledge or education of nutrition is the cause of such a food related epidemic on obesity. Someone who is overweight symbolises lack of self control, thus our society is crying out for reconstruction and individual empowerment, via the control of foodways. This points us towards a sociological perspective on the relationship between class and power of food. In all societies the working class are the marginalised, ‘uncomfortable’ portion of the population, leading to eating disorders.
Deconstructing food rules is part of the process of dismantling the hierarchies that limit the potentials and life chances of subordinate groups, as they mirror and re-construct the gender, race, and class hierarchies so prevalent in American society. American students believe that because the poor are different from other Americans they should also eat differently. Students that work as cashiers in food stores complain that people with food stamps do not shop wisely and tend to purchase junk food or luxury foods. The distribution of food stamps is based on the expectation that poor people eat more breads, cereals and beans, when in reality the poor try to eat like everyone else to overcome feelings of deprivation and seclusion. The middle and upper-class remain more powerful by exerting control over the diet of the poor, having the ability to be choosy about food, and a far more superior diet than the poor.
Bourdieu (1984) carried out research in contemporary France to analyse the tastes of upper and lower classes. His work on ‘taste’ covered in breadth other areas such as cinema, art, dress and hairstyles. Bourdieu’s analysis on food tastes uncovered conceptions of taste and consumption practises used to mould and sustain distinctions between levels of class hierarchy:
The tastes in food of high-status individuals like professionals and senior executives tend towards ‘the light, the refined and the delicate’, which serves to set them apart from popular, working-class tastes for the ‘heavy, the fat and the coarse’. (Beardsworth & Keli, 1997, p.87)
Heightened awareness of body image is also constructed through ethnicity. Subgroups are marginalised within American subculture not only by means of lack of education or housing, but African Americans, Puerto Ricans and Native Americans are subject to being overweight. The way for whites to differentiate is by becoming thin, reinforcing ethnic and racial hierarchies in U.S. culture; in turn ethnic groups are not challenging an underlining inequality in society. In contrast, in countries of great socio-economic status, such as the Middle East, fatness symbolises wealth, reflecting the economic power of the country through food consumption.
Overall, food in the west is a system to maintain hierarchy rather than projecting ideas about the world. Women’s food related roles in effect express and reflect their subordination, food related obligations and duties imposed upon women serve to further enforce their subordination. The desire to be good exerts enormous pressure and a drive to control intake and thereby gain some control over life more generally. As a result of this rigid system and drive to control we see disordered eating patterns leads in some cases to physical and health related problems. Costs of procedures for obesity related illness such as heart disease are vastly eating into the NHS, leaving us with a critical analysis of children and mothers and the larger picture of food as a political domain, understood as an entwined web. Moreover, there is little insightful research on the link between social exclusion and eating habits leading consumption of cheap and accessible food.
On a positive light, in the UK a surge in the growth of kitchen and communal gardens establishes raised environmental awareness of how we use land, through growing rather than buying. This may impact upon the demand of crash crop, eventually jeopardising these people’s livelihood. Given increasingly accessible information on the origins of our food, we are beginning to think more carefully about the food chain as a whole and ethical issues such as child labour. As food is a politicised domain, anthropologists need to focus upon implementing polices surrounded food concerns in the West.
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