The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South

CHAPTER 13 The Dance of Culinary Patriotism: Material Culture and the Performance of Race with Southern Food

CHAPTER 13 ▶ The Dance of Culinary Patriotism Material Culture and the Performance of Race with Southern Food psyche williams-forson It’s not that photographs are not good. They’re too good. . . . They contain everything.We have worked out techniques for digesting verbal data, but what can we do with photographs? john collier, Visual Anthropology (1986) World War II powerfully influenced American farming and food production . Shortly after the war began, food rationing became mandatory. Ration books were the order of the day. Continuing the World War I theme of “Food will win the war,”farmers and factories increased production to grow “army and navy men [of] rugged health and courage.” As medical doctor Thomas Parren made clear,“every drop of milk,every egg,every legume,every pound of meat and of fish [that could be produced] for Anglo-American nutrition, plus substantial quantities of animal and vegetable fats, fish liver oils, and certain vitamins [were needed].” Farms and production facilities across the country helped satisfy this need. World War II catalyzed a multifaceted food distribution system, defined by specific methods of preparation, precise measurements, and large quantities , all designed to produce wholesome and nutritious meals for soldiers. Patricia Prell writes, Service men stationed in America were issued the maximum possible fresh meat, fruit and vegetables. Overseas units still depended largely on canned food, dehydrated fruits and powdered eggs. Both at home and overseas, the military attempted not only to feed the troops,but also to feed them well.Food was generally worse closer to the front lines,though extraordinary efforts were The Dance of Culinary Patriotism 313 made to get holiday food to combat areas on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. In the South, and specifically at Craig Field Southeastern Air Training Center in Selma, Alabama, the “manifesto of security” included a “food for defense” nutrition program. According to menus from that era, soldiers ate an array of seasonal foods including, but not limited to, strawberries, eggs, bacon,potatoes,cabbage,tomatoes,lettuce,pickles,and peas.They were also fed the hallmark of southern cuisine: fried chicken. Craig Field obtained its chickens from farms that held contracts with the Food for Defense program, a division of the Farm Security Administration. John Collier, a staff photographer for the fsa/owi (Office of War Information ), traveled south to document the work being done on these poultry farms. He traced the process from production to a fried chicken dinner cooked for the white cadets at Craig Field. The archive contains a series of photographs by Collier that tell an interesting story of gender,race,food,and power duringWorldWar II.This essay considers how material culture artifacts such as photographs can be used to understand the tensions, power dynamics, and overall complexities of food and eating in the wartime South. Doing Food Analysis with Material Culture In her essay “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Robin Bernstein calls for an examination of “things” as scripters of action. She explains,“the term script denotes not a rigid dictation of performed action but,rather,a necessary openness to resistance,interpretation, and improvisation” [emphasis in original]. Bernstein suggests “that agency, intention, and racial subjectivation co-emerge through everyday physical encounters in the physical world.” In short, people perform evocative dances with things. In the case of the Craig Field photographs, such dances reflect how racial practices were constructed and enacted. Scholars of material culture distinguish between “objects” and “things.” Objects enable people to transmit and communicate meaning. People use objects “to establish and negotiate identities; establish or challenge one’s 314 Psyche Williams-Forson place in society; signify one’s social affinities, perceived social status, or occupation ; facilitate one’s relationship with other individuals or groups; and facilitate changes of self-identity or reconcile a current self-identity.” While objects in general are useful for what they reveal, scholars of thing theory from Martin Heidegger to Bill Brown intimate that objects are simply“matter that one looks through or beyond to understand something human,” while things “script actions.” The difference between the two is considered “situational and subjective” by Bernstein. Both objects and things are performative.They do something.They invite humans to move, and they shape human behaviors. A thing like a photograph is scripted, and it scripts behavior. Photographs enable us to make inferences about the past. Bernstein argues,“By reading...