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Food and Culture
One of the most common human practices is the consumption of food. Consumption and production of food differ based on different cultural backgrounds and beliefs. In anthropology, the study of food practices is a common subject that allows one to understand people through the food they eat and the choices they make related to it. Subcultures are groups with identities that differ from the dominant culture. These subcultures may involve unique hobbies and practices. Recently, many subcultures have emerged related to food that engage in alternative foodways and practices. This includes vegans, vegetarians, paleo dieters, punk cuisine and many other food-related subcultures.
Alternative Food Subcultures
Groups that reject normative food practices may do so for a multitude of reasons. This can include the rejection of food production practices that are deemed unsustainable or cruel. These groups engage in alternative food practices. Alternative food practices behave as rejections of the normative ideals of traditional food consumption. These ideals are often driven by political ideologies, ideals of environmentalism, sustainability, food justice and animal rights. There are several common rejections of traditional food consumption that the average person is likely to be aware of, such as vegetarians, vegans and people on specialized diets such as keto and paleo diets, however disputed they may be.
Food and Deviance
Other individuals may aim to show off their punk status through food. The embrace of unique foodways can function as an example of tertiary deviance. This is the stage of deviance in which individuals embrace identities rejected by society. Alternativeness in society is generally marked by a rejection of social norms and indivuality, and this can be extended to alternative food practices. These food practices deviate from traditional ones, as while food makes up an important defining element of all human culture and sociality, it is less likely to be the basis of the identity formation of a subculture for the average consumer.
Mainstream and Underground Food Subcultures
Other food-based subcultures are more normative, and many may aspire to be in them. These groups may be based more on social and cultural capital. Individuals interested in food may consider themselves ‘foodies’, a group associated with wealthier people traditionally. In the case of my father, he identifies as a ‘pepperhead’ (those who grow and cook hot sauces from scratch. These groups likely do not center their lifestyle practices so integrally around their beliefs around food and the correct ways to consume, and not consume, it. Three such groups that are truly alternative and subcultural in nature are freegans, punks, and back-to-the-landers. These groups embrace alternative and deviant lifestyles, centering their rebellion around food.
Punk Cuisine
Dylan Clark is a researcher who has spent time studying punk cuisine. Punk cuisine is what Clark calls a “subcultural food system”, meaning it is the basis for a wide range of subcultural practices with group-specific language and symbols. Many punk cuisine choices are generally designed to eschew hetero-normativity, capitalistic business practices, inequality, environmental degradation and consumerist society. Clark highlighted his theories on punk cuisine through his ethnographic studies in the Black Cat Café, a punk zone which “challenged social hierarchies” in which Portland-based punks expressed their belief systems through the preparation of food and the unique means of procuring and consuming it. Therefore, food that is associated with the traditional structure of society is inherently rejected. Following the theories of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Clark describes how punks seek food that is raw and metaphorically uncooked by its association with consumerist industry and heavy processing.
Punk Ideologies Shaping Consumption
Individuals in this subculture even sought out stolen or disposed of food through means like shoplifting and dumpster diving respectively. These processes are done to remove the capitalist financing needed to procure ingredients. Such practices may seem disturbing as they are highly transgressive. However, many things that are transgressive can have positive impacts. Punks favoured local, sustainable foods over ones that could be purchased and linked to colonialist practices, with these alternative methods serving as the next best alternative. Even food that was sold at stores focused on health and plant-based foods was considered to be negative as it commodified the lifestyle. This was because these stores were overpriced and catered to upper-middle class Caucasians (Clark 2004). This is inherently a rejection of commodification and the fetishization of food, in a society in which food is inherently symbolically linked to the structure of society and our lives.
Rejecting Restaurant Norms
The Black Cat café purposely rejected ideals of cleanliness, minimalist decoration and upscale presentation, preferring heavily used furniture, poster-covered walls and unkempt punk chefs preparing the vegan dishes. Punk cuisine also rejects traditional associations around the patriarchy and gender roles, while rejecting body and gender ideals tied into meat consumption and normative diets. (Clark, D. 2004) In the beliefs of the punk subculture, it is repulsive that the majority of food is commodified and unlinked to its production and preparation.
Comparisons to Similar Groups
Other similar subcultures, like freegans and back-to-the-landers, also reject aspects of modern food production. These groups are concerned with political and environmental issues. They believe that food production should return to more traditional, pre-industrial foodways. Punks also believe food should be linked to punk progressivity and the rejection of patriarchal and capitalistic norms. Like the punk dramaturgical performance of identity through fashion and music, food and the choices surrounding it become an embodiment of identity and countercultural revolution.
Political Cuisines
Other forms of political eating can be seen with movements like Food Not Bombs, which uses food as a form of protest and activism, based on anti-military political ideologies of pacifism (Malenfant, 2014, 110). It consists of around 500 chapters internationally which seek to challenge the status quo, with strong beliefs about food justice, animal cruelty, environmentalism, commodification and “the rejection of the greater capitalist system as a whole.” (Malenfant, 2014, 111) They attempt through protest and donation to reshape foodways while assisting the poor and others who cannot afford food. (Malenfant, 2014, 112)
Ideologies and Food
Ideologies shape the way we view food and consumption practices. These can be political, spiritual, and cultural. Animal products are generally rejected, both because of vegetarian and vegan beliefs, opinions on animal cruelty, and the lower shelf-lives of these ingredients. Dumpster diving and food foraging are also ways of alternatively procuring food (Malenfant, 2014). A lot of overlap exists between these chapters and punk cuisine, with an additional focus on a more central political ideology and goals that fight for food as a right for all. Considering the broader impact of food practices and how beliefs shape food is a beneficial practice.
Back-to-the-Landers
Back-to-the-Landers are another group that rejects normative culinary practice in favour of alternative means of production and consumption. They focus especially on the rejection of the capitalistic global industrial food system. They do not believe that food should be produced in massive quantities for profit at the expense of the environment. Writings on the topics that inspire these feelings have garnered mainstream attention, as well as through viral films that have shown portrayals of factory farming and industrial production.
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Challenges to Reworking Foodways
The ‘eat local’ movement has also never been more popular than in recent years. However, similarly to how the punks considered health food stores in a negative light, these mainstream criticisms of the food system have relatively little impact on broad systems. As most consumers do not wish to disrupt the food system due to convenience, it can be hard to challenge it. More serious practitioners shape alternative lifestyles around their beliefs in order to more seriously disengage from the system. Excitingly, efforts like The Stop in Toronto and other new alternative foodways can challenge these deep-set beliefs.
Back to Tradition
Like punks, Back-to-the-Landers also attempt to purchase necessary foods in bulk and salvage food waste from dumpsters. However, they focus even further on the production of their own foods. According to Gross, Back-to-the-Landers became a subculture sometime around the 1970s in the initial phase of the movement. At the time, these individuals were in their twenties and identified with hippie subcultural ideals. Back-to-the-landers reject traditional consumer practices, preferring to be as self-reliant as possible while living on land that they own while minimizing external resources. Generally, they tend to have large properties, with vast gardens to help feed themselves.
Community and Consumption
Back-to-the-landers differ from freegans in that they do not reject the agricultural revolution. Instead, they seek to incorporate means of producing food themselves, but not necessarily through eschewing agrarian practices, with less reliance on foraging and acts like dumpster diving. They originate more with the early 1960s and 1970s counterculture than from modern alternative subcultures. They hold a deeper commitment to the community and want to work with their community to sustain themselves. The movement was greatly bolstered by the production of successful guide books on organic, home agriculture and back-to-the-land practices (Gross, J. 2012).
Freegans
Freegans are another subculture engaged in alternative food practices. They are generally younger than the back-to-the-landers, mainly being in their twenties, and engaged in farm labour in exchange for free lodging. Many of these topics arise from the loss of rural lifestyles and decreasing self-reliance on food production. Even food producers like agriculturalists are often required to sell their food to corporations for a living instead of producing for their immediate community and family. Freegans do not permanently live in the community in which they reside, and are not fully integrated into the community. They may take part in dumpster diving in communities in which it is possible. This form of scavenging harkens back to early human food consumption practices. Also, they engage in other forms of urban and rural foraging. These include eating foraged foods from the woods, including mushrooms and plantlife, as well as consuming roadkill.
Modern Hunter Gatherers
Freegan food foraging is similar to traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, but adapted to an urban, industrialized milieu. They aim to exist in a lifestyle prior the agricultural revolution that occurred within the last ten thousand years. These inspirations to return to simpler and more successful means of food sourcing come from beliefs of anarcho-primitivism and a rejection of the McDonaldization of food. The McDonaldization of food is a theory that argues that modern food is mass produced as quickly, and cheaply, as possible. One meal consumed by freegans that relied on foraging included acorn porridge (Gross, 2012). These meals are less focused on specific diets and aesthetics, and more about proving that it is possible to live without producing or purchasing food.
My Experience with Foraging
I have personal experience with foraging, as I used to work as the line-cook for a food truck that sold food made entirely of local produce, much of which was foraged, including wild greens and mushrooms, with many similarities to the freegan style of food preparation. The head chef would hike in nearby forests once a week, bringing back baskets of foraged ingredients. While I did not join him on these excursions, he did teach me lessons about what foods could be foraged, and I often had to clean and prep these ingredients along with local farmed produce as part of my work. I also regularly consume wild garlic that grows near my home. Urban foraging can be seen as part of the modern study of urban ecosystems (https://www.yoair.com/blog/anthropology-understanding-urban-ecosystems/).
Sustainable Food Practices: A Growing Trend
Local cuisine in many areas, especially in vegan and sustainable food communities, has been influenced by alternative foodways. At the food truck, all seasonings, garnishes and herbs for the truck were grown in an attached garden based on sustainable growing techniques, and when needed I would need to walk outside and pick them fresh. No ingredients could be used that were not within a 100km radius from the small city in which the truck was based. It has since moved cities to a more western Ontario location. In more urban locales, these food trends can be more successful and have had broader impacts. Arguably, alternative food practices are more popular now than ever. These practices can also be used to help the disadvantaged urban poor through sustainable, community-based foodways.
Living Off the Grid
Another form similar to back-to-the-landers, off-grid living, is a form of lifestyle in which participants seek to live self-sufficiently with a rejection of electricity, natural gas, and other features. In a way, this can be seen as comparable to certain religious lifestyles, but due to other ideologies. These are non-spiritual, instead focusing on true self-sufficiency without any modern conveniences, in order to be environmentally sustainable. Anthropologists Vannini and Taggart did ethnographic research in a community in Manitoba, in which villagers grew almost all of their own food, produced their own electricity, and even used their own fecal matter as manure.
Ethnographic Research and Alternative Foodways
The community that Vannini and Taggart researched in Manitoba used a larger plot of land than others. This allowed them to not just use solar and wind power, but to also allow for more self-sustenance through agriculture on a broader scale. According to Vannini and Taggart, the main appeal of this lifestyle is the rejection of convenience through a rejection of traditional hegemonic means of easily consuming food. Thus, they do not use conveniences like fridges. Therefore, the use of root cellars for storage is common, and the revival of old farmstead practices can be useful. In conclusion, the primary reason for this lifestyle is a rejection of common methods of convenient consumption, viewing them as a postmodern disconnect from ‘proper’ ways of living. This way of living then reintegrates itself with the natural cycle, following seasonal production cycles (Vannini and Taggart, 2014).
Significance of Alternative Foodways in Anthropology
Many of our everyday social and cultural practices revolve around food. We meet friends for dinner, cook and produce meals that remind us of home, and even discuss it on social media. Many issues exist in the modern food system, however, including animal cruelty and environmental degradation. Embracing some aspects of alternative food consumption may appear difficult. However, it is important to consider how to improve our foodways. Hopefully, with more effort, we can improve the environment and maintain the important cultural events surrounding food for future generations. Food is one of the key facets of culture. Therefore, we can study subcultures clearly through their disassociations with normative food practices. Anthropologists should continue to observe how identities and ideologies are negotiated through the meals we cook and serve.
Bibliography
- Clark, Dylan. 2004. The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine. Ethnology 43(1): 19-31.
- Gross, Joan. 2012. Capitalism and Its Discontents: Back-to-the-Lander and Freegan Foodways in Rural Oregon. 71-87 In Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World. Edited by Psyche Williams-Forson and Carole Counihan. Routledge: New York.
- Vannini, Phillip and Taggart, Jonathan. 2014. Growing, Cooking, Eating, sh*tting Off-grid Organic Food: Deconcession, Convenience and Taste of Place. Food, Culture, Society 17(2): 319-336.
- Malenfant, Jayne. 2014. Eating politically: Food Not Bombs and growing resistance. Contingent Horizons: The York University Student Journal of Anthropology 1(1):109-122.
