Undergraduate Module Descriptor

ANT3014: Cultures: Food

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

  • What is food and how do anthropologists study it? 
  • Food and the Making and Unmaking of Bodies 
  • Commensality and Social Bodies 
  • Food in Diaspora 
  • The Birth of Agriculture and its Industrialization 
  • Famine, Food Poverty, Food Security and the State 
  • Trade and the Globalization of Agriculture and Food 
  • Food safety and sustainability 
  • Alternatives Food Systems: 
  • Food as Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Heritage

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
27.5122.50

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity151.5 hour lectures x 10 weeks
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity1.5Revision session
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity11Weekly 1 hour tutorials
Guided Independent Study5511 x 5 hours reading for tutorials (2 readings x 2.5 hours per tutorial)
Guided Independent Study16.5Preparing response papers
Guided Independent Study 51 Exam Preparation

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Abbots, Emma-Jayne (2016) “Approaches to Food and Migration: Rootedness, Being, and Belonging”, ,” in J. Klein and J. Watson, The Handbook of Food and Anthropology, London: Bloomsbury, chapter 5.

Appadurai, Arjun (1981) ‘Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia’, American Ethnologist 8 (3): 494-511.

Goldschmidt, Walter (1978) As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness, Allanheld, Osmun, and Co., chapter 2.

Inglis, David and Gimlin, Debra (2009) The Globalization of Food, Oxford: Berg. Chapter 1, pp. 3-42.

Klein, Jakob A, Johan Pottier, and Harry G. West (2012) “New Directions in the Anthropology of Food”, in The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology, eds. R. Fardon, O. Harris, T.H. J. Marchand, M. Nuttall, C. Shore, V. Strang, and R. Wilson, London: Sage Publications Ltd., pp. 293-302.

Leitch, Alison (2009) “Slow Food and the Politics of ‘Virtuous Globalization’”, in D. Inglis and D. Gimlin, eds., The Globalization of Food, Berg. Reprinted in Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterick, eds. (2013), Food and Culture: A Reader (Third Edition), New York and London: Routledge, pp. 409-425.

Madeley, John (2000) Hungry for Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade, Zed, chapter 3.

Nestle, Marion (2003) Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism, University of California Press, chapter 1.

Pottier, Johan (2016) “Observer, Critic, Activist: Anthropological Encounters with Food Insecurity”, in J. Klein and J. Watson, The Handbook of Food and Anthropology, London: Bloomsbury, chapter 7.

Probyn, Elspeth (2009) “Fat, Feelings, Bodies: A Critical Approach to Obesity”, in H Malson and M Burns, eds., Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Disorders, Routledge, pp. 113-123.

Raynolds, Laura T. 2012. Fair Trade: Social Regulation in Global Food Markets, Journal of Rural Studies 28 (3): 276-287.