300631 Anthropology of Food (30-M25) (S) (SoSe 2026)

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Requirements for participation, required level

You are what you eat, right? Surely there’s nothing more natural than eating and drinking. But how do we decide what to consume? What, and who, is included when we eat? How can we think of food as social relations? Ultimately, what does this say about us as humans? Looking at what and how people cook and eat is a great window into human creativity and how it is shaped by economic systems. Food is a resource, but it is also about values and what shapes them. Food is also a means to travel, and taste other places. Like many human endeavours, cooking and eating is at once a survival mechanism and a craft – even a fine art.

Anthropologist of food, James Staples, argues that food is never just about food but about identity. Taking that as a starting point, in this course, we’ll think about food in connection to many other social issues. We think here about skills, memory, experience, gender, politics etc. Social movements often come together around food. We can also think about questions of experiencing the world in all its complexity through food. This involves thinking about the role of food in our lives and beyond. We’ll discuss all of us by thinking with food and food items, and this discussion also includes drinks.

No prior knowledge of anthropology or sociology is required. Nor are any cooking skills. The course is open to Bachelor students and all you need is an enquiring mind, and, of course, an interest in food and culture.

Bibliography

There is a copy of Food and Culture: A Reader in the Lernraum. You can find many of our key texts there, and many other interesting chapters for this course more generally

You might enjoy this podcast by anthropology professor James Staples; which is about exploring the ‘foodscapes’ of West London:
https://themigrationmenu.com