Food as Gifts and Food as Commodities

Abstract

The comparative differences between gifts and commodities are a foundational concern of social and cultural anthropology as a whole. This framing has a long genealogy, both classic and contemporary as part of a broader consideration of the anthropology of value. This assessment of the significance of gifts and commodities as a vantage point on the anthropology of food is part of this ongoing interest in value as a social and cultural form. The article organizes its discussion around alternative perspectives, framings, and genres in order to suggest both what the problem of value more generally can illuminate about the social, cultural, and historical significance of food and, in turn, what a focus on food can contribute to an understanding of how value—and gifts and commodities more concretely—is generated and generative in social life. Moreover, it tries to show how this concern with value is further enhanced by attention to experiential dimensions of food, that is, to its sensuous properties. These sensory qualities often entail evocative characteristics, evocations that often formulate memories (and forgetting). This speaks to the capacity of food to not just link the past to the present but to characterize the nature of these linkages, as forms of progress or decline, heritage or innovation.