"Cooking, Dishes and Class"? Interpretation by Miao Wei About the author Jack Goody, British social anthropologist.

After the end of World War II, he began to engage in research in anthropology and sociology, making great contributions to these two disciplines.

He has conducted field research in Africa many times and gained an in-depth understanding of many aspects such as customs, rituals, marriages, and diet there.

Many of his academic achievements come from these field work, and his comparative research has even inspired many philosophers and economists.

About this book? This book is one of Jack Goody's masterpieces.

The starting point of this book is that Gudi noticed an interesting phenomenon: in the vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa, until the advent of the European Industrial Revolution, there was no diversified and refined diet, and the food culture was relatively simple.

To unravel this mystery, the author examines in detail the culinary practices of major Eurasian and African societies throughout history, and links the differences in food consumption in these societies to differences in their socioeconomic structures.

Core Content: Cooking, serving dishes, and eating, these daily repeated behaviors, hide among them are symbols of class that we rarely think about.

Whether a society's diet can be diversified and refined ultimately depends on whether it develops class differentiation.

A hierarchical society emphasizes differences, which will lead to differentiation in food ingredients, cooking methods, dining etiquette, concepts and many other aspects, prompting the diet to develop in a differentiated and complex direction.

Preface Hello, welcome to listening to this book every day.

In this issue, we will talk about an anthropological book about eating called "Cooking, Dishes and Class".

Together we explore how haute cuisine developed and the role of high and low dietary differentiation in human civilization.

We live in a country with an extremely sophisticated food culture. Even the daily diet of ordinary people has various methods, large and small.

We Chinese are very proud of our food. Horizontally, we have eight major cuisines. Vertically, we have both palace cuisine and peasant cuisine.

We have long been accustomed to this sophisticated culture.

However, in Africa south of the central Sahara Desert, also known as "Black Africa", until industrial food became popular, people had always used sorghum, millet and sweet potatoes as their staple food. They had nothing delicious to eat all year round.

And it’s not just working people, the ruling class eats this way too.

They are neither like our Chinese food, which has so many seasonings and cooking methods, nor are they like Western food, which has a whole set of dining methods, such as a meal starting from appetizers and ending with desserts.

You must not be able to understand the food culture of black Africa, and you may think their lives are too miserable.

Moreover, in international metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai, we have hardly seen any African restaurants. Isn’t this strange?

In such a long history, why haven't they developed a few good dishes?

Jack Goody, author of the book "Cooking, Dishes and Class," also finds this question strange.

So he asked a question: Why didn't Africa develop complex and advanced diets like those in Asia and Europe?

This question may seem insignificant, but it is closely related to a whole set of human culture such as politics, religion, social structure, and national customs.

The author Gudi raised human dietary activities to a very high position and believed that its importance can be compared with reproduction, because both diet and reproduction are major events related to the survival of a population.

So today we will unravel this mystery together with some specific examples of food culture in various countries.

The author of this book is the famous British social anthropologist and historian Jack Goody. Because of his great contributions to anthropology, he was knighted by the Queen of England.

Goody was born in 1919. After the outbreak of World War II, he went to Africa to fight, where he came into contact with many people from different ethnic groups.

After the war, he began to engage in archaeological and anthropological research, returning to Africa many times for fieldwork.

His unique personal experience gave him an encyclopedic perspective, and his research covered a wide range of topics.

For example, the impact of writing on society, family and marriage patterns, flowers and death rituals, love, desire and food, etc.

His unique research approach not only attracted the attention of colleagues in anthropology and history, but also fascinated many philosophers, educationists and economists.

Goody is good at doing comparative research, and many of his academic achievements come from field work in West Africa. This book also started from his investigations in Ghana, a country in western Africa.

The contrast of different cultures will break through the barriers of familiarity and highlight differences.

For Goody, what is “missing” in African society can in turn be said to reflect what is “extra” in Eurasian society.

However, we need to understand in advance that Goudi’s research does not emphasize the geographical distinction between Eurasia and Africa, but the cultural contrast between the two regions. In his book, he mentioned “Africa” and “Eurasia”

, sometimes it seems a little vague.

The Africa mentioned here refers to sub-Saharan Africa. Today’s Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and other countries are all in this area. North Africa is mainly an area influenced by Arab culture, which is another matter.