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CHAPTER 5 The Soul of the South: Race, Food, and Identity in the American South
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Introduction When I bring up my research on southern foodways,I am consistently asked two central questions: first, why study food, and second, why study food in relation to the American South? To begin, in the twenty-first century, it seems nearly impossible to ignore the omnipresence of food in American popular culture, illuminating an association between eating habits, food preferences, and culture—an association presumed to be ubiquitous and deep, but often taken for granted. Furthermore, food is inevitably intertwined and intimately related to numerous aspects of social life and more “traditional”topics of social investigation. For instance,poverty,unemployment ,homelessness,and the general lack of nourishment demonstrate close ties to social inequality. Research on eating disorders, body image, and food habits often links these concepts to social-psychological theories of social identity,self-esteem,and beauty norms presented in the media. In contrast, the overconsumption of food forms a central concern of both the sociology of medicine and education subfields. Moreover, what and when one eats are tied to one’s ethnicity, family structure, neighborhood context, and socioeconomic status, all topics of concern to sociologists of the family and stratification. In addition, sociologists would also certainly take notice of how the dynamics of gender roles, domestic labor, and the family meal have shifted since the 1970s. An increasing number of mothers work full-time but are still expected to prepare meals for their families, presenting yet another link between food and the CHAPTER 5 ▶ The Soul of the South Race, Food, and Identity in the American South beth a. latshaw 100 Beth A. Latshaw research of gender sociologists. Finally, food is closely related to the sociological subfields of religion, culture, and race/ethnicity, as it plays a central role in building social cohesion/solidarity for spiritual and ethnic groups, confirmed by the persistent presence and usage of food in religious rituals, celebrations, gatherings, festivals, and ethnic enclaves. These premises provide ample support for the notion that sociologists should pay attention to food because of its inescapable ties to countless building blocks of social life. Despite this apparent reality, as Ferguson and Zukin correctly point out, the “material and symbolic richness” of the provision , distribution, and production of food, as well as the role food plays in marking boundaries around social groups, has been largely ignored by the discipline. Alex McIntosh maintains that while a number of social theorists have indeed alluded to the human need for food, food preference and consumption is “frequently taken for granted” both as a vital element of social life and as a basis for collective identity. Critics have also said that the “sociology of food” subfield suffers from the lack of a central, defining paradigm. Despite sociologists’distance from the study of food and society, anthropologists have long studied how foodways aid in the generation and maintenance of symbolic, cultural meanings and boundaries. The term “foodways” itself can be defined as the “the customs, beliefs, and practices surrounding the production, presentation, and consumption of food” or, more simply, as “the intersection of food and culture.” Within foodways studies,the cultural approach sees food as a significant social construct imbued with symbolic meaning. A“food culture,” like a language, is a form of communication and a“prime domain for conveying and encoding meaning.” Thus, food can reinforce a group’s distinctiveness—as in Christians drinking grape juice/wine and consuming bread during Communion and Jews consuming matzo during Passover—thereby fortifying the group’s symbolic boundaries and marking its uniqueness from outsiders. Moreover , while consuming a sandwich is certainly not intended to transmit social information, signify group membership, or provide information about the self (thereby serving only a “utilitarian function”), eating a “punnet of sheeps’ eyeballs” (or, perhaps, eating chitterlings in the South) is far more significant, fulfilling what Shavitt and Nelson call a “social identity function .” This essay draws on this important social psychological distinction [35.175.172.94] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:12 GMT) The Soul of the South 101 and adopts a cultural approach to interpreting foodways in the southern region. This leads to the second important question regarding the intent of this piece: why bother studying food in relation to the American South? First, as sociologist Larry J.Griffin remarks,no other region in the United States“has been more intensively analyzed and interpreted than the American South,” making it an interesting and important site of...