Raw v Cooked

[Toddy]

I've been doing some reading / research for a medieval cooking project and this question of raw or cooked comes through in several forms. Status, cleanliness, taboo, religious, or moral exclusion....

Levi-Strauss, a French structuralist anthropologist, wrote 'The Raw and the Cooked’, 1970)

The following is a bit from the course notes (anthropology/ food) from Sussex Uni,
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cach...k/cultural/documents/v3003_lecture_4_food.doc

Structuralists believe all humans structure the world through binary oppositions

All things have meaning, are symbolic, because they are all opposed to something else

hot:cold, green:red, mother:father; death:life; raw:cooked

Looks at the dichotomy between nature and culture and the way this distinction works through raw food, as opposed to cooked food

Culture is opposed to nature as cooking is opposed to the process of decay

All cultures mediate or change raw things into food by cooking them

Just as nature transforms raw things into rotten things by a process of decay

He argues that ‘the raw/cooked axis is characteristic of culture; since cooking brings about the cultural transformation of the raw’ (1970:142).

Cooking transforms nature into culture; ‘cooking is conceived of in native thought as a form of mediation’ (Lévi-Strauss 1970:64).

So cooking mediates the transition from nature to culture

Levi-Strauss treated food practices as a language; identifying the primary binary opposition, common to all cultures, between nature and culture; cooked food is a cultural transformation of the raw

Through cooking nature is transformed and delimited; the ways which this transformation is carried out as part of everyday life serves to define cultures.


Sooooo, our 'culture', this bushcraft we practice; we don't always cook food, in fact uncooked is good foraging practice But we do cook, over open fires, stoves, in hangi's........

Does knowing how to do this, the familiarity of using 'raw' (e.g. fresh caught rabbit or squirrel or newly dug up roots) in their season, change the way we perceive food at home ? Does it change the way we socialise with food? Does it in someway define 'our' culture ?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[ANDYRAF]

Being a simple person I'll ask the simple question, does what you eat and the way you eat them differ in where you eat them,ie in the woods or at home.

Personnally speaking I pretty much eat the same in either place, and as to cooking differently in either environment again I say no difference, raw carrot tastes the same where ever you are.

This probably has not answered your question which was on culture and nature being in opposition and I'm afraid I don't agree with the premise that they are opposites.

We define our culture by the choices we make, not what or how we eat.

Does that make sense it did when I started, or have I got the wrong end of the stick again, OH Bother!

 

[Toddy]

No, I think I do understand your reasoning I sorry I didn't make my question as clear as I might.

It was the divide, this idea of opposites, and 'nature' being the opposite of 'culture' that got me wondering. I (personally) don't perceive any oppposite thing going on. In fact I kind of feel that my friends quite actively incorporate Nature into their lives; their culture.
Indeed many of them strive to base their lives firmly established within a natural (as opposed to an entirely human constructed built one) environment, and seasonal round. Many more wish they could somehow become disciplined / organised enough to be able to live fully without as many modern conveniences. Sub cultures maybe?


cheers,
Toddy

 

[elevenses]

Does knowing how to do this, the familiarity of using 'raw' (e.g. fresh caught rabbit or squirrel or newly dug up roots) in theire season, change the way we perceive food at home ? Does it change the way we socialise with food? Does it in someway define 'our' culture ?

cheers,
Toddy

A great question
I wonder where we fit in to his theory and where sushi fits in.

The culture of food and eating has changed dramatically over the last century IMHO. It seems less of a gathering now and more of just eating.
I wonder how many people have "family" dinners now.

Sunday lunch when I was a kid was a time for all the family to get together and chew the fat literally as well as figuratively. (no religious reason)

TV, fast food and modern conveniences has changed all this I think. So for me a question is has the nature of the new food changed our culture or has our new culture changed our food.

I know people who do not want to eat an apple from a wild tree saying "will it be ok to eat" !! how many kids know where meat comes from? what is in bread.

Are we a separate culture all together ?

great thought provoking thread

Thanks

 

[scanker]

I agree about the change in emphasis from dinner being a gathering to just eating. I'm lucky in that I'm very rarely away with my work and that 99% of the time I'm home at 4.45pm every night. We sit down at the dining table for every meal. It was something we decided we wanted to do when our youngest was just a baby and it's just the norm now. If nothing else, it means the crumbs etc are only confined to one area! But we have friends whose children eat at one time and the adults eat at another. Often different things too. Not sure that's addressed "the raw and the cooked", but I was interested in the point being made.

 

[xylaria]

It is odd concept for a french guy to come up with that there such a black and white difference between raw and cooked, nature and culture, considering they have a culture that eats virtually raw meat as a point of high culture.

I take your point that nature isn't opposite to any form of domestic life, the more in harmony with seasons my food and domestic routine is the better. But I am not very cultured.

Is bushcraft a subculture?, Does it cover too broad a spectrum of skills to be considered a just a past time?

 

[Tadpole]

In ‘nature’ food is taken ‘as is’ a squirrel does not cook its food. A lion eat whole from the animal it has killed. Man for nearly all of its history ate food with fingers and teeth. That is nature.
Culture happens when you take what is ‘natural’ and for little or no discernable reason (at the time) change it for purely 'social' reasons . We cook our food, we eat from plates, and we use forks to pick delicately at morsels of food. Few if any of us tear at our roast on a Sunday with teeth and fingers. That is culture, not all of culture but a small part.
I eat foraged food as and when I can find it, be it seasonal berries, nuts, or even seaweed. It matters not where I am eating or what company I have. I will serve a dish of steamed sea beet alongside regular spinach, should I be able to gather enough.