In its most transactional sense food is energy, a resource required for life to exist. If we leave the discussion at this point however, we risk missing a more profound aspect of what food means in the larger cultural sense. Food is a signifier of cultural status, inclusion, and class, but it helps us to understand who we are through a deep systemic set of activities and spaces. Wendell Berry reminds us:
A culture is not a collection of relics or ornaments, but a practical necessity, and its corruption invokes calamity. A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, work conviviality, reverence, aspiration. It reveals the human necessities and the human limits. It clarifies our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other. It assures that the necessary restraints are observed, that the necessary work is done, and that it is done well (Berry, 1977, p.43).
In this definition culture is more than a way of making meaning, it provides a social function that clarifies and edifies both behaviors and objects. Culture in this sense is woven deeply into the matrix of the social system, and cannot be extracted from it without damaging it in a fundamental way. Food in this sense is more than a set of social signifiers; it is also a set of practices, spaces, and outcomes all of which speak to the larger structural value system of the social system.
[O]ne cannot fully understand cultural practices unless ‘culture,’ in the restricted, normative sense of ordinary usage is brought back into ‘culture’ in the anthropological sense, and the elaborate taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the elementary taste for the flavors of food (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 1).
Bourdieu calls us to see past the normative aspect of culture and move into a more nuanced understanding of the permeation of culture in all that we do. In this sense food cannot be reduced to a set of ingredients or procedures, rather, it must be gauged in how it is set within the activities of social life. Not only are we concerned with what is eaten, when it is eaten, and with whom, but also we must extend our vision to see how the production and allocation of food is structured within the social system. This examination asks us to look at food as a complete system and it opens our eyes to where value is placed on the resource of food as well as the meaning of food. If we reduce our examination of food to the kitchen or the dining room we miss very important places within the social system that are imbued with value and distribution of resources. These choices within a society represent more than a static snapshot of value, rather they express the conversations of changing values.
For the different forms of consumption in hierarchical societies are not simply transformations of a timeless cultural pattern that continues unaffected by a changing social system. They are in conflict with one another not only at the formal level but in action too. They may generate conflict and conflict may generate change (Goody, 1982, p. 35).
Changes in the food system represent larger shifts within society. As Brillat-Savarin has famously stated: show me what men eat and I will tell you who they are – we can understand something of social meaning, value, class, and change when we look at how food is produced, distributed, fabricated, consumed and disposed of as a complete system. If we are to move past understanding culture in Bourdieu’s “restrictive, normative sense” we will need to understand food practices not as bifurcated events, but as a systemic representation of the social structure which they serve to sustain. It is the goal of this paper to begin this refocusing of how we study the culture of food. I intend to outline the five phases of the food system in order to create the framework through which we can begin to see the deep connection between food and people. In my experience the most effective way to accomplish this is through the power of narrative. It is my hope that by telling a brief story about the food of a region (in this case the Acadiana region of Louisiana) I will be able to show how all parts of the food system weave together to form the container of cultural meaning and value. Ultimately, this is a story about sustained survival, and it holds within it the potential key to how we perceive a sustainable food system. Instead of creating new technologies that dismantle our cultural systems there is the potential to return to the traditions and heritage we have won over many centuries of learning how to live in our world, and on our world. It is to the bayou we must now depart.
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