Political Gastronomy

Political gastronomy” refers to “what food meant—and how food meant” in the political relations of English colonists and Algonquians of the Atlantic Seaboard in the seventeenth century (p. 13). It explores the symbolic meanings of food and feasting within each cultural sphere and how they were deployed within colonies and in intercultural confrontation. While it is gratifying to see a historian addressing a subject that is part of the bread-and-butter of anthropological inquiry—and at the same time attempting to bridge disciplinary boundaries—the result here is nevertheless disappointing. Bridging the boundaries is difficult, but given Michael A. LaCombe's intention to be anthropological about his subject, he would have done well to look more thoroughly into anthropological sources. He cites none of the considerable work on the anthropology of food, reciprocity, gender, or governance, all important aspects of his analysis. As a result, he spends a lot of time reinventing the wheel, when he could have used established insights to push his analysis further. There are omissions as well, such as his almost complete neglect of labor as part of reciprocity or his reluctance to take seriously nonmaterial aspects of exchange items (e.g., that a foreign object is more valuable than its domestic counterpart). His scholarship is likewise limited regarding Algonquian cultures and with similar results. For instance, he declares that “dual sachemship” was not found in the Chesapeake, but most modern anthropological work in this area agrees that it was. And that work anticipates most, if not all, of his conclusions (p. 94

Discipline · Gastronomy · Political science · Politics · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Tourism · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Law