Substane and cultural controls

This week your personal ethnography, will have three parts. For the 1st
part you are going to examine your personal and local substance and
economic patterns. You will be examining what you eat, where it comes
from, and how you obtain it.

Make a list of all of the foods you have
consumed in a week and then trace where that food comes from on a map
(use the Google Map tool to create your map).

Take one of the items that you purchased and examine specifically how that item ended up in your grocery store.

What is the trade route it took from farm to your table?
Who grows or makes this item, where is the company headquarters located?
Is this different from where the food is harvested or produced? If so where is it harvested?
Who are the laborers involved in harvesting or creating this food, what culture do they come from?
How are laborers treated in this culture – what are their wages and health conditions?

For the 2nd part of your Personal
Ethnography assignment this week, think about the cultural controls that
are placed on the foods you eat. Create a list of the cultural controls
that impact the types of food you eat and how you eat them. Then
identify what type of control you are experiencing (internalized,
worldview, social control, sanction, or law), and who regulates them
(family, ethnic group, religion, state, etc…).

Discuss one form of this cultural control in more detail and the impact it has on your life.

Finally, for the 3rd part,
discuss any political or geopolitical forces affecting the economic
systems of the food you eat and the cultural controls you experience
around food.

Make sure to use the anthropological terms you learned throughout this week’s textbook reading.

Last Completed Projects