Food, Body And Society
- Course Code:
- 15 PAN H041
- Unit value:
- 0.5
Following an introductory session, this course begins with an examination of how people have historically met their food needs, from foraging to hunting and fishing, to agriculture. The agricultural revolution, and the industrialisation of agriculture, are approached as partial and ongoing historical processes. A unit on food safety asks not only whether the food we eat is safer or more suspect than in the past, but also lays the foundation for examination, in subsequent units, of definitions of the edible and inedible, as well as how food is used to construct and/or sustain the human body. The remainder of the term is dedicated to examining how food is used to construct social bodies of various dimensions and kinds, from the family to the ethnic or religious group, to the nation.
Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
Upon completion of the course, students should recognize, understand, and/or appreciate the following:
- The widely disparate functions food plays in the lives of human beings, ranging from the provision of sustenance to the experience of pleasure.
- The various ways that individuals use food to construct their bodies.
- The various ways people use food to communicate ideas about themselves and social groups.
- The ways in which food serves as a means to delineate social groups.
- The array of means by which humans have met their food needs over time, including gathering, hunting, herding, fishing, and cultivating.
- The historical processes and stages by which food production has been industrialized.
- The dimensions and significance of processed food in contemporary consumption patterns.
- Issues in food safety and regulation.
Students should be aware of the principal actors and agents in the phenomena outlined above.
Students should know where to find information on the above topics, whether books, scholarly journals, popular media, or websites.
Students should be able to identify key debates on the above issues and express informed positions of their own.
Method of assessment
30% of the course mark derives from weekly reading response papers and contributions to seminar discussions; the remaining 70% of the mark is based upon a 2-hour exam.
