The Raw, the Cooked, and the Packaged: Anthropologists Intersecting with Business and Food - Powell

The Raw, the Cooked, and the Packaged: Anthropologists Intersecting with Business and Food 

CHAIR: ERICKSON, Ken C. (U S Carolina) POWELL, Michael (Shook Kelley) Food Retail Brands as Cultural Mediator: Curating and Creating Value in a Complex Supermarket Environment 

ERICKSON, Ken C. (U S Carolina) That’s Some Good Food Right Here: Value Transformations in the QSR (“Fast Food”) Product Itinerary 

MOYNIE, Bruno (Independent) The Taste of the Road: A Visual Ethnographer’s Glimpse at the Food and Social Landscape along the Mississippi River 

YUNG, Jo (Steelcase Inc) The Practice of Life Nurturance in Urban China: Exploring the New Interpretation, Practice and Challenges 

CULLEN, Makale F. (lore) A SHED for Prunes and a RAFT for Crane Melons: Designing Cultural Content for Multi-Use Commercial Food Spaces

 

ABSTRACT:

ERICKSON, Ken C. (U S Carolina) The Raw, the Cooked, and the Packaged Anthropologists Intersecting with Business and Food. Food—in American grocery stores, fast-food joints, US homes, or in eateries in Mainland China— shape, reflect, and contest what it means to be human and what it means to operate a grocery store or a restaurant. What happens, then, when businesses, customers, and anthropological practices intersect? The anthropological engagements with business clients reported in this session will explore how and why anthropological involvement with food is so often fraught, sometimes delicious, and always part of anthropological work. 

 

Session took place in Vancouver, B.C. Canada at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, March 29 - April 2, 2016.