Скачать или смотреть Ewa Grigar: Sociology of Food

Are you interested in studying food and eating? Study online with ECES this summer!
Visit: https://eces.ff.cuni.cz/onl/

Eating is a natural necessity for almost all human beings. Food, however, does more than
just help humans survive and grow. It can become a political tool, a marker of social
class and gender, a mirror of significant cultural differences. On a more individual scale,
it can be related to personal identity, habits and health. As our perspective in this course
is sociological and semiotical, we shall look at food both as a source of embodied
experience, and as a language that can be decoded. It is a symbolic system that reflects
the everyday habits of humans, norms of societies, as well as deeper, internalized
meanings. Food will thus become a lens through which we will see and analyze our
different cultures in a new light. We will ask questions such as: What is the place of
origin of our food? How did our food get to us? How does food configure and change
relations among people?
During our comparisons and practical workshops, we shall trace the histories of some of
the most significant meals of the Czech Republic (and former Austro-Hungarian empire).
Their transformations will help us understand the social changes that took place in
Central Europe from a different perspective. Questions such as gender relations,
families, political economy, health (obesity, anorexia, bio food), ecology and the nationstate will be discussed. We will read academic articles that react on these questions in
various national and ethnic contexts.
There will be one on-line cooking workshops where students will learn how to make
Czech potato pancakes!