Food Says a Lot about a Society: A Conversation with Anthropologist Agnese Bankovska

What does food mean to you? Is it a physiological necessity? Pleasure? Tradition? Or something else entirely? Can you imagine Christmas without rosols (Latvian potato salad – ed.), gingerbread, tangerines, pīrāgi (Latvian bacon buns – ed.) or grey peas with speck? Have you ever wondered why? Why don’t we choose to put pasta or dumplings on the table at Christmas, and why would Jāņi not be Jāņi without beer and cheese? Why do we drink champagne on New Year’s Eve and have cake on our birthday? Why do we set a table for the most important occasions in our lives and why is it so important to come together? What determines our taste preferences and why is one country’s favourite dish considered inedible in another?

When I told people about our conversation, everyone went silent at the words “food anthropology”. They were confused. We are not used to thinking about food in a broader way. Why is that?

Food anthropology is a major sub-topic of social anthropology and includes such interesting angles such as kin, bonding and relationships, experiences related to body image, ethical issues against the backdrop of climate change, and the environment. Food anthropology officially entered university curricula some 50 years ago. Since food is so important in all societies around the world, it has become a field worth studying. Food says a lot about a society.

What do you think is the most important thing that food says about us as people and as a society at Christmas?

To begin with, Christmas is only a tradition in one part of the world, in what we call the Western world. People need to repeat celebrations every year and they become a ritual. Putting out the best of what we have on the table is not just a custom at Christmas, but also at other annual events and important dates in life. Food becomes symbolic and plays a big role in how we perceive wealth: if you have food, you are wealthy. You have status. 

Latvia has been influenced by many different cultures, so we can't talk about one specific Christmas. I am unfortunately not aware of how the Russian-speaking community in Latvia celebrates this holiday, but I assume that they don’t eat a nine-course meal as is traditional for Latvians. This idealised Latvian tradition comes from folklore. In the old days, December was the last time of the year where people were still well-off. The harvest had been gathered, the pigs were ready for slaughter and there was still food in the cellar. Christmas thus became a symbolic way to give thanks and to celebrate life. As spring approached and food supplies dwindled, people had to become more modest in their customs. Nowadays, this tradition could be seen as having become more of a habit as eating habits are the slowest to change.

Another very important factor within food anthropology is taste, the physiology of it and how we perceive food with our senses. In anthropology, as well as in the broader study of experiences and perceptions, this is called embodiment or embodied knowledge. David Sutton is one of the most cited food anthropologists. He spent many years conducting research on the Greek island of Kalymnos and concluded that children observe adults’ behaviour when they sit in the kitchen and absorb this knowledge. Nobody specifically teaches them this knowledge, but as they grow up, they have the skills to know what to do and how to do it. This is embodied knowledge. There are cultures where food and food preparation skills are very important where people cannot imagine their identity and how it ties in with their dignity, honour, and status without it.

Where does the idea come from that it’s not Christmas without a roast or gingerbread cookies? Just like in the USA it’s not Thanksgiving without turkey, or how important tea is in the UK.

Partly, it is this embodied memory. We strive for pleasurable emotions that we have once experienced. Smell and taste create memories and it is through smell that these memories most vividly come to life. Smell is a powerful sense that plays an important role in how we experience food. If we have a pleasant experience, such as a family get-together on a particular holiday or a special dish your parents used to make when you were a child, you will, of course, want to repeat it. We often hear people say that things used to taste a certain way when they were children. This is a conjured reality so how reliable this memory is, is another question. These ideas tie society closer together and helps to shape the frames within which we live.

At what point did food go from merely being a physiological necessity to becoming a pleasurable activity?

Historically, it has been a very inconsistent process closely linked to status, wealth, and affirmation. We have to talk about privilege and people’s ability to afford certain foods. Taking pleasure in food is associated with special or luxury dishes.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that many of the foods we currently enjoy could also become luxuries taking climate change into consideration. The price of products like coffee, chocolate, and meat will rise significantly as it becomes more difficult to grow and produce them. We will no longer be able to afford to use them on a daily basis, but only enjoy them on special occasions. Meat is a big and complex topic worthy of a separate conversation.

Back to Christmas. What has happened with rosols? It’s become more than a potato salad.

Yes, I agree. It’s an entire cultural experience. Everyone has the “right” recipe. It’s really more like a competition! There is a well-known recipe for a fancy rosols with 20 ingredients from pre-war Latvia, then during the Soviet period this recipe came to include pickles and sausage. Now vegan restaurants have their own type of rosols on the menu. This means that rosols has become one of the ways in which we perceive taste. I associate rosols with celebration and working together to prepare for it.

(At the end of the interview, you can find anthropologist and photographer Elīna Kursīte’s findings from her research on the phenomenon of rosols in Latvia).

At Christmas we don’t only put food on the table, but there is also food in churches and at other religious rituals. What can you say about this?

It fits into the broader topic of food as a symbol and as a part of a ritual. Sacramental bread is about the re-creation of man as an individual and of society through incorporation. We recreate ourselves and continue to recreate ourselves through food as a substance. Although not related to Christianity, Janet Carsten has done a great deal of research on how this substance, food, enters our bodies and is passed on to our children through breast milk, creating bonds of kinship in the wider society. In a religious context, this is how one connects with deities, the supreme being or entity that is important to all religions in one way or another. Food can connect people to the higher self spiritually. 

We eat at all major life events. In different cultures, there is an idea that only people who are related in some way eat together. If I eat with someone, I am indicating that this relationship is important to me?

Yes, this is also the case in studies by Janet Carsten and other anthropologists from all over the world. Food plays a very important role in how you choose the circle of people close to you. Sharing food shows that the recipient is included in your close community.

The concept of commensality (sharing food, being together through food) is often used in anthropological studies. We share food with people who are of social importance to us, which in this case is a re-creation of the self physiologically and symbolically.

During the pandemic, one of the restrictions people voiced as being the most difficult to cope with was that restaurants and cafés were closed. This indicates that how and where people enjoy their food plays a role too.

This is a very good example. The outcry that cafés and restaurants were closed was not about people not having enough to eat, but rather about socialisation – we were denied the possibility to get together with friends and have a good time. Here food plays the role of social glue. When I was doing my doctoral research, I often heard that one of the nicest things to do was to get together at someone’s house and cook. Thirty- to forty-year-olds told me that this was not only about having a good time but about renewing friendships too. I think that for previous generations, family reunions and large family gatherings, including cemetery celebrations, were more important than they are now. In my opinion, the younger generations are more influenced by the West – new flavours and foods appeared in Latvia and people wanted to explore them. All in all, however, it has to be said that food choices change slowly. People eat quite traditionally, and habits in this area change very slowly.

Is it possible to change these traditional choices? Why are people so reluctant to accept new flavours? I heard that a Latvian restaurant in Estonia had to take grey peas with speck off the menu because they didn’t understand it. How do people learn what is flavours they like and what they don’t?

It’s difficult, because this is directly related to how we perceive taste and very difficult to change. In the food industry, huge amounts of resources are being devoted to scientists researching how to make food more appealing. Sociologist Paul Rozin has done a lot of research on how feelings of disgust develop – physiology, social habits, and norms all play a role. What is tasty and what is not is defined by the culture that a person lives in.

Let’s use mushrooms as an example. Many people don’t eat them, not because they don’t like the flavour, but because of long-standing societal beliefs that mushrooms are dangerous. Humans are, in a sense, animals who have over time learned which foods are dangerous and which are not. Recently, while looking for literature for a study, I learned that there is an “official” division between mycophilic and mycophobic societies, or societies that love mushrooms and societies that fear them. Germanic societies and many others belonging to the so-called West are historically mycophobic. There was no need for them to gather mushrooms to survive. In more northern countries, however, mushrooms were often an essential foodstuff that helped people survive the harsh climate. Finland is an interesting example. It is divided into two parts: the western part is influenced by Swedish culture and here people mostly only know what chanterelles are, but closer to the Russian border people pick a wider range of mushrooms, like milkcaps. In the eastern parts, people are less picky and think more practically, ‘if I pick mushrooms, I’ll have something to eat in the winter’.

Overall, it is a complex and deeply evolutionary question – how we have evolved and continue to choose survival strategies through food and combine them with social ideas of what is valuable and what is not. There is a belief, which Rozin’s research also supports, that bitter flavours are associated with danger, which has then evolved into a social aversion to this flavour.

Have you tried the traditional Swedish fermented herring surströmming? How can something like this exist?

No, I haven’t, but it could exist because of what I said before about taste memory and habits. Even if a lot of things seem disgusting at first, you get used to them. I used to not understand how people could like olives. Coffee also has an ambivalent flavour. Once you’ve stopped drinking it for a while, you can’t understand how you were once able to drink it. There are also so-called “tipping point” flavours, which are being explored by crisp and other junkfood developers. What are the flavours we perceive and where is the line beyond which consumers will stop buying a product?

I can’t help but take this opportunity to ask about an observation I’ve made. It is hard not to notice that there are now coffee machines everywhere in Latvia – even in nature reserves! What has happened?

When I visited Latvia this summer, I noticed it too. I was surprised! The Finns are the biggest coffee drinkers in Europe, but you won’t see as many coffee machines in Finland. Coffee is undeniably a comfort drink that gives a certain pleasure, just like chocolate. The spread of coffee machines might be due to COVID-19, that people want to treat themselves in difficult times. But this is just a personal theory. Several studies have shown that food became a source of comfort during the pandemic. Many people felt bad and food provided an escape. People started baking their own bread, for example. People enjoyed making food with their own hands and got a sense of security from this activity. For others, however, food became extremely stressful as the number of shared meals increased, which was particularly hard on women. Women perform most of the invisible care work and this is a major topic within food habit research.

You said at the beginning that gender is a topic in food anthropology. Can you tell me more about this?

In many parts of the world, food culture is associated with women. The food may often be acquired by men, but it is more often women who prepare it, something considered to be a job requiring less skill and is thus less valued. If we look at food as a resource, it immediately becomes a question of power relations and status. Even in what we call Western societies, this invisible work in the kitchen is still mostly done by women. Whatever progress has been made, research shows that the situation is far from equal, even in Scandinavia, and that men’s participation in daily food-related work (what food researchers refer to as “foodwork”) is low. 

At the same time, there are so many different cooking shows and blogs on TV, YouTube and social media, and the majority of them star male chefs.

Looking at how the role of the chef has developed is a whole other topic. Being a chef has historically been a male profession. As it became a more public profession, it has over time become a status symbol. Historically, women have not appeared in the public eye as high-status chefs because their place has traditionally been in the kitchen, or in the domestic sphere. As television became available to large sections of society, even the women who have appeared on TV shows, such as Julia Child, were positioned as “evangelisers” of progress and the ease of cooking at home in the US. I would not even call them chefs, but rather cooks. This goes hand in hand with the rapid industrialisation of food production and consumption. If we look at today, you could say that there are chefs cooking prestigious food in public on one side, and invisible everyday cooks, still mostly women, on the other. I recently listened to a conversation with Latvian chef Mārtiņš Sirmais at the National Library of Latvia where he said that compared to even a few decades ago, there are now several highly acclaimed female chefs in Latvia (three, if I remember correctly).

Speaking about kitchens – I have noticed that in new building designs, the kitchen is not a separate area anymore. What does this mean?

This is strongly linked to food being perceived as having a more functional role. In Scandinavia, for example, food is often reduced to the level of nutrient intake and not given as much importance. Rather it is primarily seen a source of energy. Both the Nordic kitchen and the cuisine can be considered as being more functional. There is no time to sit and enjoy food, because it is too cold. An hour-long lunch break is something unusual. This is different to Spain or Italy, for example.

Do I understand you correctly that the Southern tradition to enjoy meals over several hours is rooted in geography?

Yes, eating is very important to these cultures. It’s an entire performance that focuses on family, socialisation, and bonding. Geographical differences are also why food is preserved in the North to such a degree, while in the South people feel that food that has been prepared the previous day is inedible – they are used to going to a tree and picking an orange or buying fresh molluscs at the market in the morning.

Christmas and New Year are approaching. Why is having a cake with candles a symbol of celebration in many countries and what role does champagne play on New Year’s Eve? 

There was a time when only certain sections of society could afford cakes. Sugar was expensive, and cakes were therefore a luxury item. The tradition is believed to have originated in Germany, but cakes as a product became widely available with the industrialisation of food production. It was one way of making large sections of society happier. Candles are traditionally a symbol of light and are associated with connecting to a higher power and by blowing them out, people express their wishes.

It is very similar with champagne – historically, it was a celebratory drink for royal occasions in France and was sourced from the Champagne region. At that time, however, it wasn’t the bubbly wine we know now. Until the 17th century, bubbly wine was considered as a failure in the wine production in the Champagne region. Producing bubbly wine on purpose only started when it became popular in the UK around the same time. With industrialisation in the 19th century, champagne became widely available in France and was associated with the Champagne region. Today, the story of champagne and its seemingly unique origins can be considered to be a coincidence and the result of long and successful marketing.

What traditional foods do the Finns eat at Christmas?

Stews from turnip and other root vegetables are popular in Finland. Karelian pies are a special food that people also eat daily. It is very similar to the Latvian sklandrausis, but is traditionally filled with rice, which is quite strange. Where did they get rice from up in the north? The pie is topped with butter and a chopped egg. It’s a very rich dish.

In Spain, even families that are not very traditional always provide a lot of food. Every meal is a celebration. Regional Christmas sweets are very common. In some families, cannelloni is very popular on 26 December. This is a cylindrical type of lasagne filled with minced meat and topped with béchamel sauce. The kitchen is the epicentre of every celebration. 

It seems we share this tradition with Spain. Thank you for the conversation!

The findings of anthropologist and photographer Elīna Kursīte while researching the phenomenon of rosols in Latvia.