Navigating Identities in Three Parts

Introduction

The identity of the American people has been a very well discussed topic for the past few centuries. What makes American’s their own unique people and culture has been thoroughly questioned and pursued up to the modern times. Food has been used time and again to tell us why we are the way that we are, why we act in certain ways, and why we hold certain values. Historians, especially those focusing on food, love to refer to French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s declaration, “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are.” Searching for reasons to explain the American culture, as well as being used to explain other cultures, this quote has been utilized to show that there is a direct connection to food having meanings that goes beyond simple physical sustenance. Using foodways to explain the history of our nation is indeed an important step in analyzing how, as a nation, we have been and who we are now.

Using food as a way to navigate identities is very thorough in approaching the study of America’s history and anthropology. Food touches on every aspect of the human life and therefore sheds a great amount of information on the identity of the population. It expresses personhood; membership of a group, race, and ethnicity (or non-membership); religious and political aspirations. All of these factors combine to provide a cultural meaning and identity within our country, though with differences seen in the vast geographic settings that span a large country such as America.

Food thus makes a large impact and indicator of various aspects of the human experience within a given culture. However, the ways that food is provided for and the changes in time allow for some argumentation that food does not alw...

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...een as being made by women. With the march of time this amount of segregation based on gender may go down even more.

Conclusion

Food encompasses every day of the human life. It fuels our bodies and makes a statement about how we view ourselves as well as the world around us. It also has become more unified around the world and in America, and there is less shock about eating what used to be considered strange and ethnic. The way that America’s history has played out has homogenized many foods to making a unique cuisine that only America can truly lay claim to. The different ethnic, religious, and political groups have made America a truly distinctive place to come and experience food. While food cannot tell us everything about ourselves because of different factors that have changed the landscape of food, it has given our country a remarkable identity all it’s own.