PROGRAMME PARTICIPANTS

PARTICIPANTS
PROGRAMME
EMMA-JAYNE ABBOTS
Research Associate
SOAS Food Studies Centre
Email: ea1@soas.ac.uk
TOM SELWYN
Visiting Professor
Department of Anthropology, SOAS
Email: ts14@soas.ac.uk
GRACIA CLARK
Professor of Anthropology
Indiana University
Email: gclark@indiana.edu
JOSÉ SOBRAL
Senior Research Fellow
Insituto de Ciênsias Sociais (ICS)
University of Lisbon
Email: jose.sobral@ics.ul.pt
JACK GOODY
Emeritus Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Cambridge
Email: jrg1@cam.ac.uk
JAMES STAPLES
Senior Lecturer
Department of Anthropology, Brunel University
Email: James.Staples@brunel.ac.uk
JAKOB KLEIN
Lecturer in Social Anthropology, SOAS
Deputy Chair, SOAS Food Studies Centre
Email: jk2@soas.ac.uk
JAMES L. WATSON
Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society
and Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus
Harvard University
Email: jwatson@wjh.harvard.edu
STEPHEN MENNELL
Professor Emeritus, School of Sociology
University College Dublin
Email: Stephen.Mennell@ucd.ie
ANNE MURCOTT
Professorial Research Associate,
SOAS Food Studies Centre
Honorary Professor, School of Sociology and
Social Policy, University of Nottingham
Email: am112@soas.ac.uk
JOHAN POTTIER
Professor of Anthropology with reference
to Africa SOAS
Email: jp4@soas.ac.uk
HARRY WEST
Professor of Anthropology, SOAS
Chair, SOAS Food Studies Centre
Email: hw16@soas.ac.uk
RICHARD WILK
Provost Professor of Anthropology
Indiana University
Email: wilkr@indiana.edu
SAMI ZUBAIDA
Professorial Research Associate,
SOAS Food Studies Centre
Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology,
Birkbeck College
Email: s.zubaida@bbk.ac.uk
FRANÇOISE SABBAN
Director of Studies and Research Director
Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine
Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
Email: sabban@ehess.fr
CENTRES & PROGRAMMES OFFICE
SOAS, University of London
Design: RB, Centres & Programmes Office, SOAS, ~ 2012
SOAS FOOD STUDIES CENTRE
SYMPOSIUM
19 & 20 March 2012
SOAS, University of London
Convenors
Dr Jakob A. Klein
Professor Anne Murcott
Cooking, Cuisine and Class in
the Anthropology of Food Today
2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Jack Goody’s Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in
Comparative Sociology (Cambridge University Press). In this ambitious book, Goody compares the culinary cultures
of preindustrial ‘Eurasia’ with those of sub-Saharan Africa, and seeks to explain why it is that differentiated, ‘high’
and ‘low’ cuisines developed across the former, but not in the latter. In the second part of the book, Goody considers
the emergence of a ‘world cuisine’ of industrialized foods, and examines the role this plays in local contexts, particularly within the emerging class system of postcolonial Ghana.
Goody’s book was a seminal intervention in the anthropological study of food. Moving beyond sterile debates
between proponents of ‘symbolic’ and ‘materialist’ approaches to food classifications, it encouraged serious
attention to questions of power and inequality; to comparative understandings of historical processes – including
‘globalization’ – which both differentiated ‘food systems’ and articulated them; and to the complex interaction
between symbolic systems, on the one hand, and situated practices of producing, distributing, preparing and consuming food, on the other. In doing so, Cooking, Cuisine and Class was instrumental in transforming the study of
food from a long-standing but often marginalized interest among social anthropologists, to what has become a
major area of enquiry in anthropology and cognate disciplines, including sociology and history.
In recognition of the enduring influence of Cooking, Cuisine and Class, the symposium convenes leading and
emerging anthropologists, sociologists and social historians of food, based in the UK and internationally, at the
SOAS Food Studies Centre to discuss themes raised in Goody’s work. Participants working in and between Asia,
Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas will discuss their own research in relation to broader theoretical,
methodological and empirical developments in the study of food in their respective regions, particularly in the last
thirty years. The symposium – and the published workshop volume – will thus provide a broad-based and critical
assessment of the current state and future possibilities of food studies, particularly within anthropology.
Funded by a research grant from the SOAS Faculty of Arts and Humanities
You are also invited to our upcoming event...
19 March 2012 / ROOM 116
10:00-10:30
Welcome ~ Refreshments
10:30-12:00
Sami Zubaida: ‘Food for Drink: Mezze, Tapas and Co.’
Discussant: Tom Selwyn
12:00-14:00
Lunch
14:00-15:30
Françoise Sabban: ‘The milk issue in China: past and present’
Discussant: Jakob Klein
15:30-15:45
Tea & Coffee Break
15:45-17:15
José Sobral: ‘The high and the low in the making of the
Portuguese national cuisine’
Discussant: Richard Wilk
17:15-18:45
Stephen Mennell: ‘Indigestion in the Long Nineteenth Century:
Aspects of English Taste and Anxiety, 1800-1950’
Discussant: Anne Murcott
19:15
Dinner
SOAS FOOD STUDIES CENTRE DISTINGUISHED LECTURE 2012
Salt Water Margin:
Red Rice, Reclamations, and Restaurateurs
along the South China Coast
(An Ethnographic Puzzle)
20 March 2012 / RUSSELL ROOM
09:15
Refreshments
09:30-11:00
James Staples: ‘Civilising tastes: from caste to class in
South Indian foodways’
Discussant: Stephen Mennell
11:00-12:30
Gracia Clark: ‘From Fasting to Fast Food in Kumasi, Ghana’
Discussant: Harry West
12:30-14:30
Lunch
14:30-16:00
Johan Pottier: ‘Catering and Class in East London:
The Bangladeshi experience’
Discussant: James L. Watson
16:00-16:15
Tea & Coffee Break
16:15-17:45
Emma-Jayne Abbots: ‘The Fast and the Fusion: Class, Colonialism
and the Remaking of Comida Típica in Highland Ecuador’
Discussant: Richard Wilk
17:45-18:45
Concluding Discussion
19:15
Dinner
James L. Watson
(Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Harvard University)
Thursday, 22 March 2012 @ 7pm
Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS, University of London
This event is free and open to the public but booking is essential.
FOR MORE INFORMATION & TO REGISTER, PLEASE VISIT:
Organiser: SOAS Food Studies Centre
Centres & Programmes Office
Contact: centres@soas.ac.uk or Tel: 020 7898 4892/3
facebook.com/Centres.SOAS
www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies/forum/lectures
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Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
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Design: RB, Centres & Programmes Office (REO), SOAS