Ellen Messer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3616636 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Messer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen |
| FAMILY NAME | Messer |
| SIGNATURE | MESSER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tufts University |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-2583-8790 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 323 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
From Nutritional Anthropology to Anthropology of Food & Nutrition: Evolving Hunger, Human Rights, Conflict, Sustainable Food Systems Agendas
The Committee (later Council) on Nutritional Anthropology was organized in the mid‐1970s to bring together the anthropology of food and nutrition that spanned archeology, evolutionary biological and physical, sociocultural, and also theoretical, applied, and policy‐engaged interests. This essay, drawing on my personal and professional experiences and prior American Anthropological Association contributions, outlines the history of the Society for…
The Body in Balance: Humoral Medicines in Practice
Focusing on practice more than theory, this collection offers new perspectives for studying the so-called “humoral medical traditions,” as they have flourished around the globe during the last 2,000 years. Exploring notions of “balance” in medical cultures across Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, from antiquity to the present, the volume revisits “harmony” and “holism” as main characteristics of those traditions. It foregrounds a dynamic notion o…
Gerardo Otero: The Neoliberal Diet. Healthy Profits. Unhealthy People
The Heirloom Tomato is ‘In’. Does It Matter How It Tastes?”
A resurgence of interest in more traditional, authentic and distinctive foods is reflected in the popularity of farmers’ markets, with the premise that locally grown produce is superior in flavor and other sensory and culturally valued characteristics to similar fare from the global marketplace. In this arena, heirloom tomatoes (heirlooms) are increasingly popular with their diverse appearances and tastes. But heirlooms are also idiosyncratic, wi…
Household-level dietary quality indicator for countries in nutritional transition: Application to vulnerable communities in El Salvador
Objective To develop a household-level diet quality indicator (HDQI) using the Salvadorian dietary guidelines to assess the dietary quality of households in vulnerable communities in El Salvador. Design The Salvadorian dietary guidelines were reviewed and eighteen HDQI components were identified (nine foods and nine nutrients). The components were evaluated using a proportional scoring system from 0 to 1, penalizing over- and under-consumption, w…
How We Count Hunger Matters
Hunger continues to be one of humanity's greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policy-makers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency of the United Nations. In 2010 the FAO reported that in the wake of the 2007–2008 food-price spikes and …
Local Notions of Healthy Eating and National Dietary Guidelines: A Comparison in Vulnerable Salvadoran Communities
This study presents an assessment of local definitions and perceptions concerning healthy eating through a study in four resource-poor border communities in El Salvador. The study included focus groups, key-informant interviews, and observations of the food environment. Local definitions of healthy eating elicited through focus groups were compared to the national Salvadoran dietary guidelines recommendations. The comparison revealed several area…
Understanding and responding to the links between conflict and hunger
Rising food prices in the late 2000s sparked protests, sometimes violent, around the globe. These public expressions of outrage were only the tip of the iceberg. Many countries have a legacy of food wars. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least 14 countries faced severe food insecurity as a result of conflict, civil strife, forced displacement, or damage from past wars. Armed violence leads to ongoing cycles of food loss which have an impact on food avai…
Food Aid and the World Hunger Solution: Why the U.S. Should Use a Human Rights Approach
The United States government has been the world's largest donor of food aid for decades, and since 1990, with the end of the Cold War, its overall purposes and explicit policies are directed to alleviate world food insecurity and hunger. Yet many assert that a human rights approach would be the best way to reduce food insecurity and hunger. This study posits that the security concerns of U.S. foreign policy and the political–economic interests of…
A Tribute: Thomas J. Marchione, Anthropologist, Food-Security Specialist, and Human Rights Advocate
The papers in this special issue of Food and Foodways offer a kind of festschrift, celebrating the multiple professional accomplishments and human rights-based approaches of Tom Marchione, professi
Rising Food Prices, Social Mobilizations, and Violence: Conceptual Issues in Understanding and Responding to the Connections Linking Hunger and Conflict
In 2008, the world confronted food-insecurity situations that provoked political demonstrations in more than 50 countries. The alleged sources were production failures and spiking food prices because of bad weather and flawed food and development policies. But additional contributors were the legacies of food wars, armed conflicts in which one or both sides use food (or hunger) as a weapon and in which hunger persists as a consequence of conflict…
Unwrapping Hunger in the Classroom: Teaching the Anthropology of Food and Food Policy
Can a Right-to-Food Approach Help
Cultural Factors in Food Habits: Reflections in Memory of Christine S. Wilson
Nutrition and anthropology have a long history of collaboration in studies of food and changing food habits. Adopting Christine Wilson's (1973) Handbook of References as a starting point, this analysis considers changing nutrition and anthropology institutional contexts for food and culture studies, the increase in available data bases, the ways politics enter into anthropological and nutritional studies of food, and positive versus negative orie…
Conflict, Food Insecurity and Globalization
In this article, we examine the links among food insecurity, globalization and conflict. We summarize and critically evaluate existing studies on conflict as a cause of food insecurity; food insecurity as a cause of conflict; and the relationship between conflict and globalization. Next, we analyze country-level, historical contexts that implicate export crops, e.g. coffee and cotton, in triggering and perpetuating conflict. These cases suggest t…
Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias
From Hardtack to Home Fries. An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals
From Hardtack to Home Fries. An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals. by Barbara Haber New York: The Free Press, 2002
Hope's Edge. The Next Diet for a Small Planet
Hope's Edge. The Next Diet for. Small Planet. Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe. Penguin Putnam Inc., 2002
Commentary: World Food Day in the 21st Century
Council on Nutritional Anthropology: No Feeding Frenzy on Hunger
Economics
Intra-household allocation of food and health care: Current findings and understandings-Introduction
Pluralist Approaches to Human Rights
Some anthropologists criticize United Nations "universal" human rights as ethnocentrically Western. But all sociocultural groups define some concept analogous to human rights, and multiple political and philosophical cultures have contributed to the evolving UN framework. This essay traces the four major sources of modern human rights (Western political liberalism, socialism and social welfare principles, cross-cultural rights traditions, and the…
The Comparative Analysis of Human Societies: Toward Common Standards for Data Collection and Reporting
The Comparative Analysis of Human Societies: Toward Common Standards for Data Collection and Reporting
Anthropology and Human Rights
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Anthropological Perspectives on Diet
Whether viewed frQm archaeQlQgical-histQrical, sQciQcultural, Qr biQmedical perspectives, fQQd is a basic CQncern for all human societies. Reflecting that basic concern, anthropologists have long been interested in human diets, and specifically in (a) the ecological and market availabilities of foods; (b) the sociocultural classifications of foods as edible or inedible, rankings as or less preferred foods, and rules for distribution; and (c) the …
Intra-household allocation of food and health care: Current findings and understandings-Introduction
Hippocrates' Latin American Legacy: Humoral Medicine in the New World
The hot and cold in mesoamerican indigenous and hispanicized thought
How We Count Hunger Matters
Hunger continues to be one of humanity's greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policy-makers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency of the United Nations. In 2010 the FAO reported that in the wake of the 2007–2008 food-price spikes and …
Rising Food Prices, Social Mobilizations, and Violence: Conceptual Issues in Understanding and Responding to the Connections Linking Hunger and Conflict
In 2008, the world confronted food-insecurity situations that provoked political demonstrations in more than 50 countries. The alleged sources were production failures and spiking food prices because of bad weather and flawed food and development policies. But additional contributors were the legacies of food wars, armed conflicts in which one or both sides use food (or hunger) as a weapon and in which hunger persists as a consequence of conflict…
Small but Healthy? Some Cultural Considerations
1976 Classification and Definition of Protein-Energy Malnutrition. In Nutrition in Preventive Medicine. G. H. Beaton and J. M. Bengoa, eds. Pp. 530-552. WHO Monograph Series No. 62, Geneva. 1986 Emerging Priorities for the Nutritional Sciences. In Nutrition Issues in Developing Countries for the 1980s and 1990s. Proceedings of a Symposium. Food and Nutrition Board, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council. Pp. 436 1. Washington, DC:…
Hot-cold classification: Theoretical and practical implications of a Mexican study
Conflict, Food Insecurity and Globalization
In this article, we examine the links among food insecurity, globalization and conflict. We summarize and critically evaluate existing studies on conflict as a cause of food insecurity; food insecurity as a cause of conflict; and the relationship between conflict and globalization. Next, we analyze country-level, historical contexts that implicate export crops, e.g. coffee and cotton, in triggering and perpetuating conflict. These cases suggest t…
Pluralist Approaches to Human Rights
Some anthropologists criticize United Nations "universal" human rights as ethnocentrically Western. But all sociocultural groups define some concept analogous to human rights, and multiple political and philosophical cultures have contributed to the evolving UN framework. This essay traces the four major sources of modern human rights (Western political liberalism, socialism and social welfare principles, cross-cultural rights traditions, and the…
Some Like It Sweet: Estimating Sweetness Preferences and Sucrose Intakes from Ethnographic and Experimental Data
Understanding and responding to the links between conflict and hunger
Rising food prices in the late 2000s sparked protests, sometimes violent, around the globe. These public expressions of outrage were only the tip of the iceberg. Many countries have a legacy of food wars. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least 14 countries faced severe food insecurity as a result of conflict, civil strife, forced displacement, or damage from past wars. Armed violence leads to ongoing cycles of food loss which have an impact on food avai…
Food Aid and the World Hunger Solution: Why the U.S. Should Use a Human Rights Approach
The United States government has been the world's largest donor of food aid for decades, and since 1990, with the end of the Cold War, its overall purposes and explicit policies are directed to alleviate world food insecurity and hunger. Yet many assert that a human rights approach would be the best way to reduce food insecurity and hunger. This study posits that the security concerns of U.S. foreign policy and the political–economic interests of…
Can a Right-to-Food Approach Help
Trying technology
Women's and Children's Activity Profiles: A Comparison of Time Allocation and Time Allocation Methods
Cross-culturally, there is a growing interest in the effect of women's participation in the wage economy on the quantity and quality of maternal interaction with children and children's development. Essential to all of the questions concerning the effect of women's work on their interaction with children is a methodology for studying how women in different cultures use time. This paper draws on two independent field studies, one done in Senegal a…
Patterns of “wild” plant consumption in Oaxaca, Mexico
Although the maize‐beans‐squash complex of the Mesoamerican native diet is usually stressed, the utilization of wild greens may supply an important addition to the nutritive intake of these people, especially during times of crop failure. Field work in Abasolo, Oaxaca, Mexico has shown the number of species used, and the quantities of the individual species employed are regulated by both the natural limits of the ecosystem and the cultural prescr…
The Vegetational History of the Oaxaca Valley and Zapotec Plant Knowledge: Memoirs No. 10
In Part I of this volume, C. Earle Smith draws on years of survey in the Oaxaca Valley and archaeological discoveries of plant remains in the region to create a portrait of the valley's original wild vegetation, previous to human settlement. In Part 2, Ellen Messer provides the results of her ethnobotanical study of the Zapotec residents of Mitla, a town in the southern highlands of the Valley of Oaxaca. Over the course of four years, she studied…
Hot-cold classification: Theoretical and practical implications of a Mexican study
Anthropological Perspectives on Diet
Whether viewed frQm archaeQlQgical-histQrical, sQciQcultural, Qr biQmedical perspectives, fQQd is a basic CQncern for all human societies. Reflecting that basic concern, anthropologists have long been interested in human diets, and specifically in (a) the ecological and market availabilities of foods; (b) the sociocultural classifications of foods as edible or inedible, rankings as or less preferred foods, and rules for distribution; and (c) the …
Huastec Mayan Ethnobotany. Janis B. Alcorn
Women's and Children's Activity Profiles: A Comparison of Time Allocation and Time Allocation Methods
Cross-culturally, there is a growing interest in the effect of women's participation in the wage economy on the quantity and quality of maternal interaction with children and children's development. Essential to all of the questions concerning the effect of women's work on their interaction with children is a methodology for studying how women in different cultures use time. This paper draws on two independent field studies, one done in Senegal a…
The ?small but healthy? hypothesis: Historical, political, and ecological influences on nutritional standards
Some Like It Sweet: Estimating Sweetness Preferences and Sucrose Intakes from Ethnographic and Experimental Data
The hot and cold in mesoamerican indigenous and hispanicized thought
Applied Anthropology: Coping with Uncertainty in Food Supply . I. de Garine and G. A. Harrison , eds
Indian nutritionists and international nutritional standards: Concepts and controversies
Malnutrition: What Can Be Done? Lessons from World Bank Experience. Alan Berg
Small but Healthy? Some Cultural Considerations
1976 Classification and Definition of Protein-Energy Malnutrition. In Nutrition in Preventive Medicine. G. H. Beaton and J. M. Bengoa, eds. Pp. 530-552. WHO Monograph Series No. 62, Geneva. 1986 Emerging Priorities for the Nutritional Sciences. In Nutrition Issues in Developing Countries for the 1980s and 1990s. Proceedings of a Symposium. Food and Nutrition Board, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council. Pp. 436 1. Washington, DC:…
Trying technology
Film Reviews
Book reviewed in this article: The Ribbon . 1987. Directed by Harriet Avshon . With These Hands . 1987. Produced by Chris Sheppard and directed by Chris Sheppard and Claude Sauvageot . The Struggling People. 1987. From the Only One Earth series. Produced by Rachael Lyon and directed by Barbara Pyle
Systematic and medicinal reasoning in Mitla folk botany
Africa, Asia, and Latin America
Anthropology and Human Rights
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Anthropology and Human Rights in Latin America
Human rights issues in Latin America have been actively pursed in anthropology during the past seven years. A summary of recent changes in anthropology and human rights precedes a discussion structured by categories used by human rights scholars and advocates: civil‐political; ecoromic‐soclal‐cultural; development; and Indigenous rights. Interpretatlons suggest that anthropologists have been very active In documenting human rights abuses, but les…
Anthropology and Human Rights in Latin America
Dietary intake changes associated with post‐cyclone food aid in Western Samoa
This study examines dietary intake responses to a food aid program in Western Samoa, which consisted primarily of rice and flour supplements. Using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, intake estimates were made for 147 Samoans (72 men, 75 women), 5 months before and 8 months after a tropical cyclone. Study participants were from urban Apia (n = 34) and three rural, more traditional villages (n = 113). For the total sample, consumpti…
The Comparative Analysis of Human Societies: Toward Common Standards for Data Collection and Reporting
The Comparative Analysis of Human Societies: Toward Common Standards for Data Collection and Reporting
Committee for Human Rights Responds
Hippocrates' Latin American Legacy: Humoral Medicine in the New World
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Geography (14 works) · Law (14 works) · History (13 works) · Culinary Culture and Tourism (12 works) · Economics (12 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Anthropology (11 works)