Sweetness and power, Slides of Modern History

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Sweetness and Power

Think 53: Food Talks

Dan Jurafsky & Yoshiko Matsumoto

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Sidney Mintz (1922-­‐2015)

Anthropologist

Studied the Caribbean

Pioneer in

anthropology of food

The article you read

Was an early Mintz lecture that led to

Sweetness and Power

Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

M.F.K. Fisher (1908-­‐1992) In 1963, W. H. Auden called her "America's greatest writer." Wrote 15 books Hundreds of New Yorker stories Photographed by Man Ray

My favorite writer:

M.F.K. Fisher

"People ask me: Why do you write

about food, and eating and

drinking? Why don't you write

about the struggle for power and

security, and about love, the way

others do?"

"…when I write of hunger, I am

really writing about love and the

hunger for it, and warmth and the

love of it and the hunger for it."

M.F.K. Fisher

My subject matter "caused serious writers and critics to dismiss me for many, many years. It was woman's stuff, a trifle."

Mintz as revolutionary

Before Mintz, food was considered a

"trifle"

Mintz showed that the study of food

is absolutely central to history and

the social sciences.

Showed that hidden behind everyday

objects or foods were enormous

questions about power and status

Why sugar?

The history of sugar tells us about

◦Power

◦How ideas are borrowed across

cultures

◦Economic influence on cultural change

◦Social status

◦How food and culture acquires

symbolic meaning

Mintz:

Mystery of Sugar Consumption

Why the massive rise in European consumption of sugar? Britain, annual per capita consumption: 1704: 4 lbs 1800: 18 lbs 1900: 90 lbs

Etymology as a clue: Candy in the Oxford English Dictionary Etymology: < French candi in sucre candi ; compare Italian zucchero candi (found, according to Littré, in an Italian author of 1310), Spanish azucar cande , Portuguese assúcar candi , medieval Latin saccharum candi ; < Arabic, originally Persian qand sugar, the crystallized juice of the sugar-­‐cane (whence Arabic qandah candy, qandī candied); of Indian origin, compare Sanskrit khanda ‘piece’, also ‘sugar in crystalline pieces’, < khand to break. As in the other languages, the full sugar candy ( sugar-­‐candy n.) appears much earlier than the simple candy.

Sweetness and Power: Sugar Production

How sugar produced since

ancient times

Mintz calls it “a series of liquid-­‐solid operations”

◦ Cane is chopped ◦ Cane is then ground, pressed pounded or soaked in liquid ◦ Heating the liquid causes evaporation and concentration ◦ Crystals appear

Sugar is extremely labor-­‐intensive:

◦ must be cut when the cane is ripe, and ground as soon as it is cut

Sugar in the Moslem world

Widespread by the 9

th

century