S/S/35. Discuss with reference to specific ethnographic examples, what we may learn about people from looking at food and eating

This essay will present the various structural accounts of the anthropological significance of food, alongside those which analyse the cultural implications of food not as a universal code, but a dynamic process in which social actors are constantly in the process of manipulating and shaping their cultural codes. It will propose that structural accounts are useful, but a less formal and nuanced account of the significance of food is required.