Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary PerspectivePolly Wiessner, Wulf Schiefenhövel The use of food to negotiate status is found in all human societies. Here, for the first time, a single book brings together contributions from different disciplines to investigate, from ethological and anthropological perspectives, behavior that appears to have biological roots such as the tendency to seek status through the medium of food. It explores the limits that our biological heritage places on cultural expressions of such behavior, as well as the multiplicity of ways in which biologically based tendencies can be transformed by culture. Finally, it addresses the impact of status-seeking on nutritional programs in developing countries. |
Contents
The Ethological Bases of Status Hierarchies | 19 |
The Evolution of Nurturant Dominance | 33 |
Dominance Status Food Sharing | 39 |
Food Sharing and Status in Unprovisioned Bonobos | 47 |
The Function and Evolution | 69 |
Feasts and Commensal Politics in | 87 |
Feasting in Prehistoric and Traditional Societies | 127 |
Food Production and Social Status as Documented | 149 |
Constraints on | 171 |
Food and the Status Quest in Five African Cultures | 193 |
Food Competition and the Status of Food | 219 |
Securing Staple Food | 235 |
Food and Household Status in Nepal | 253 |
Nutritional Security and the Status Quest | 263 |
Notes on Contributors | 277 |
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Common terms and phrases
adult aggressive animal Anthropology archaeological archaic attention structure beer behavior Big-man societies biological Boesch bonobos bridewealth Cambridge Univer ceremonial exchanges chimpanzees commensal commensal politics competitive feasting consumption context culture diet Dietler distribution dominance dominance relationship drink economic Eibl-Eibesfeldt Ethology females Figure food sharing forager societies Grammer group members Gurna guru harvest gifts Hayden hierarchy high status high-ranking Highlands Hold-Cavell household human hunter hunter-gatherers hunting important individuals Inuit Iron Age labor liku Lomako males Massa mate Mbuti McGrew meat Mesolithic Mussey Neolithic Netsilik Inuit nutritional organization owner Papua New Guinea participants patterns pigs Pintupi plant foods position Press prestige primates proto-elamite Pygmies rank orders reciprocal red sorghum relations relationships reproductive success ritual role social status Sociobiology sorghum South New Guinea status quest strategies Strathern symbolic Tawema texts tion Trobriand Trobriand Islands Upper Paleolithic village Wamba wealth Wiessner women Yassa