Review

Reviewed Work(s): Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory by

David E. Sutton
Review by: Johan Pottier
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Mar., 2005), pp.
161-162
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3804011
Accessed: 15-02-2019 00:41 UTC

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 BOOK REVIEWS 161

It is disappointing, Eating as embodied

therefore, practice, another keytha
did not make fuller use of their introductiontopic, addresses the question of what it is about
to expound and elucidate the theoretical food that makes it such a powerful source of
implications ofthe ethnographic chapters and memory. Here Sutton argues that food's
thereby realize their ambitions for the bookmemory power derives from the synthesis or
more completely. crossing of experiences from different sensory
Paul Basu registers, the process known as synaesthesia.
Synaesthesia, the Kalymnos ethnography
University of Sussex reveals, helps us understand the significance of
food in identity maintenance when migrants
leave home. Foods that accompany or reach
people onan
Sutton, David E. Remembrance of repasts: their travels (migrant workers,
anthropology of food and memory.students)
xii, 211constitute a cultural site critical for
pp., illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York:
understanding Kalymnian and Greek experi?
Berg Publishers, 2001. ?42.99 (cloth),
ences of displacement, fragmentation, and
?14.99 (paper) survival. Following Proust, the Kalymnian/
Greek foods that the travellers indulge in can
Kalymnians, the inhabitants of the Greekas being 'the part that holds the
be viewed
island of Kalymnos, say they eat inkey
order to
to re-vivifying a whole structure of asso?
remember. The claim has inspired David
ciations' (p. 83). It is the experience of the
qualities
Sutton to embark on a full exploration of theof taste and smell ? universals that
under-researched field of food and are
memory.
also culturally elaborated - that triggers the
Exploring the food-memory link on synaesthetic
Kalym? memories which enable the re-
nos and elsewhere, Sutton sheds imagining
light on of worlds temporarily lost. Transna?
tional food
topics ranging from structure and history, to exchange emerges as an excellent
'embodiment', to consumption. Remembrance
entry point for the study of how globalization
of repasts begins with an investigation of how identities and experiences.
reconfigures
ritual and everyday contexts of eating Butrein-
food memories can also be illuminated
force each other. It demonstrates that through
food is analysing the structural interrelation-
best treated as an object or place forship
memory
of meals. Following Mary Douglas s work
on the meal
practices. Food has this prerogative because it as social event, Sutton demon?
'can hide powerful meanings and structures
strates that 'the basic similarity of meal struc?
under the cloak of the mundane andtures the calls
quo-others to mind, other meals that share
tidian' (p. 3). Sutton shows that there is much
many similarities, but are worth narrating for
their
to be gained analytically from an explicit differences, their divergences from the
focus
on the intersection of food, memory, and pattern' (p. 108). People thus
recognizable
religious ritual; a dimension generally missing
engage in a process of repetition, at the level
from ethnographic studies. of the meal and at discursive levels, to make
Bringing food and memory together certainalso
types of meal memorable. At this point
in the argument, parallels emerge between
enables reflection on the classic anthropologi?
cal theme of exchange. On Kalymnos, food food and remembering the past.
remembering
exchanges (food generosity/hospitality) arehistory need to be read together.
Meals and
continually 'witnessed' through sociallyIn 'Doing/reading cooking', the fmal
effec?
chapter, Sutton juxtaposes the embodied
tive narration; they generate lasting narratives
apprenticeship of oral learning (cooking
that establish people's names and reputations.
Food generosity, moreover, is shown through
to be 'adoing) with the formal learning
mediated
key site for elaborating notions of group iden?through cookbooks (mostly 'nostal?
gia cookbooks'
tity, in particular a "modern" identity that in the United States) and
poses itself in contrast to a lost written
past inrecipes. He considers what these
which generosity made up the shared sub?might tell us about the conceptu-
cookbooks
alization of authenticity and loss as experi?
stance of everyday life' (pp. 16-17). However,
as becomes abundantly clear, theenced recentin the United States. Samples reveal a
shared
availability of transnational foods may also paradox:
re- what is nostalgically longed
valorize old foods by making them for - the oral community and all the em?
epigram-
matic of other temporalities. New foods
bodied knowledge that comes with it ? is
provide a locus for what Sutton calls 'memo?
being preserved through writing. Sutton
reflects
ries of gemeinschaff. A telling example regards that the predicament of cookbook
the memory of'real' tomato paste before
writers EU
parallels that of anthropologists, since
regulations kicked in: the 'real' paste, the
like most
latter too struggle with representing social
things in the past prior to chemicaldynamics
process?in static textual form, and often
ing, is believed to have tasted better. What
traffic in nostalgia. Food for thought aplenty.
Sutton has put the topic of food and
people lament in their memories of gemein-
schaft is not so much a change in food prac?
memory firmly onto the map of anthropo?
logical
tices as a change in lifestyle over which inquiry and theory. Taken together,
they
have little or no control. food and memory do indeed shed new light

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 162 BOOK REVIEWS

on classical as well as new theoretical interests writings and the myriad ways in which his
and approaches within the discipline. Notwork has been adapted/adopted within the
only do new vistas of investigation and social sciences. To be sure, many, including
methodology open up, but there is the par?myself, will find points of disagreement with
ticularly pleasing side-effect that reading thisCrehan's reading. Yet, overall, I fmd the effort
stimulating book makes one aware of per?to renew and broaden anthropological inter?
sonal, seemingly long-forgotten food memo? est in Gramsci and in the concepts of class and
ries. This sensory experience confirms much hegemony to be quite refreshing. I have long
of what Sutton has argued. felt that the rush to what might be called
post-Gramscian critical theory was more than
Johan Pottier
a little premature.
School of Oriental and African Studies Furthermore, I think that the reasons for
the hurried attempt to get beyond Gramsci as
well as notions of class can be more clearly
understood once one considers Crehan's
arguments. Put simply, she contends that the
Method and theory potential contribution of Gramsci's work to
anthropology has been undermined by the
attempt to condense his concepts into 'more
Crehan, Kate. Gramsci, culture and anthropology.manageable definitions' (p. 175), that is, defi?
x, 220 pp., bibliogr. Berkeley: Univ. nitions which tend to elide the complexities
California Press, 2002. ?49.95 (cloth), of power that Gramsci was attempting to
?18.95 (paper) understand. Crehan provides abundant exam?
ples of this practice. For instance, she notes
Kate Crehan, in the space of a little over that too often Gramsci's notion of hegemony
two hundred pages, attempts to provide ais in practice 'taken as referring solely to the
fresh perspective on links between theory in domain of ideas, beliefs, meanings and values'
anthropology and the work of theorist (p. 173). As she aptly points out, such reduc-
Antonio Gramsci. She does this first by pro- tions eliminate his crucial notion that to be
viding a 'reading' of Gramsci in relation to hegemonic, ideas must be embedded in
cultural theory in anthropology, and in thepractical activity, in practices 'that produce
latter part of the book through a critique of
inequality, as well as the ideas by which that
the various ways in which Gramsci's work hasinequality is justified, explained, normalized,
already been incorporated into dominant and so on. While Gramsci may have stressed
theoretical discourse in anthropology (asconsent, and sometimes the intertwining of
exemplified in the work of Eric Wolf andforce and consent, he never saw hegemony
others). Through this strategy, she attempts to simply as ideology' (p. 174).
test her own reading of Gramsci to indicate Crehan claims that the idealist rendering
what additional intricacies of power might of hegemony is widespread, even arguing
have been revealed had the authors in ques?that the slipshod use by anthropologists of
tion employed a reading of Gramsci moreRaymond Williams's seminal work on hege?
akin to her own. Her goal in this endeavourmony in Marxism and literature is to blame (a
is ultimately to consider 'how anthropologywork she unnecessarily calls 'hegemony lite':
might enter into conversation with this morewhat use is there in making such a derisive
substantial, but also more problematic andremark about a scholar who, like Crehan
challenging thinker [Gramsci], exploring whatherself, was making a serious effort to incor-
would happen if we as anthropologists wereporate Gramsci's ideas into critical theory?).
to engage seriously with Gramsci's theoriza-Nevertheless, I do concur that the idealist
tion of culture, and his mappings of the livedrendering has become widespread. It is epito-
realities of power' (p. 166). mized in James Scott's Weapons of the weak.
I must admit to having been a bit sceptical Crehan notes that Scott claims abruptly that
of this project at first glance. Readings of'[hjegemony is simply the name Gramsci gave
Gramsci have never been lacking, and asto this process of ideological domination'
Crehan herself notes throughout the book,(Scott cited in Crehan, p. 167). Though
such readings have often been simplificationsCrehan's comments are brief in regard to
of his work, which in turn tended to sup- Scott, one cannot underestimate the damage
plant more thorough, and more widespread,that this idealist reduction has done to
engagement with Gramsci's own writings.Gramsci's potential contribution to contem?
However, Crehan's reading proves to be aporary efforts at the mapping of power. For it
largely measured one (if sometimes marred byis this sort of reductionism which has led
repetitive phrasings such as 'it seems to me';many to abandon any real attempt to under?
a phrase I think should be excised from stand what indeed Gramsci was trying to say.
academic rhetoric). This achievement is quite Space does not allow for a more detailed
admirable given the complexity of Gramsci's inventory ofthe ways Crehan tries to connect

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