Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory

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Proust's famous madeleine captures the power of food to evoke some of our deepest memories. Why does food hold such power What does the growing commodification and globalization of food mean for our capacity to store the past in our meals - in the smell of olive oil or the taste of a fresh-cut fig This book offers a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food and memory. Sutton challenges and expands anthropology's current focus on issues of embodiment, memory and material culture, especially in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture across borders and boundaries. The Greek island of Kalymnos in the eastern Aegean, where Islanders claim to remember meals long past -- both humble and spectacular - provides the main setting for these issues, as well as comparative materials drawn from England and the United States. Despite the growing interest in anthropological accounts of food and in the cultural construction of memory, the intersection of food with memory has not been accorded sustained examination. Cultural practices of feasting and fasting, global flows of food as both gifts and commodities, the rise of processed food and the relationship of orally transmitted recipes to the vast market in speciality cookbooks tie traditional anthropological mainstays such as ritual, exchange and death to more current concerns with structure and history, cognition and the 'anthropology of the senses'. Arguing for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory, this book significantly advances our understanding of cultural processes and reformulates current theoretical preoccupations.

Reviews

'A charming book about food's role in the construction of memory. It must be important to say something that everybody knows, but is ignored by the specialists. It will stop nutritionists, psychologists and philosophers of mind from systematically ignoring that eating is primarily social, and memory is embedded in taste and smell.' Mary Douglas 'An exellent contribution to the anthropology of the politics of the senses and emotion.' South European Society and Politics 'The recipe [Sutton] has chosen to present, the Kalymnian Filla, is indeed one of the best strategies of remembering Greece and of planning in the present to re-taste it in the future.' South European Society and Politics 'Sutton is a keenly sensitive observer of the everyday routines and subtle variations of life and brings a greatly appreciated seriousness to his study of the performances of everyday life.' Gastronomica 'Sutton has put the topic of food and memory firmly onto the map of anthropological inquiry and theory... Not only to new vistas of investigation and methodology open up, but there is the particularly pleasing side-effect that reading this stimulating book makes one aware of personal, seemingly long-forgotten food memories' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5:1

Author Bio

David E. Sutton Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University.