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Cutting up Cultures
Author(s) -
Symons Michael
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6443.00186
Subject(s) - meaning (existential) , food preparation , division (mathematics) , cooking methods , green food , sociology , aesthetics , engineering , business , marketing , food processing , psychology , art , food science , ecology , mathematics , biology , arithmetic , psychotherapist , raw material
The dictionary meaning of ‘cooking’ is heating food, but cooks do much more. Socially, the essential activity is distributing food. Kitchen knives are central. The historical success of kitchen knives has led to their being overlooked; for the division of food at meals goes hand in hand with the division of associated tasks, and specialist helpers, typically men, have aggrandised their trades and tools – soldiers their swords, farmers their ploughs and priests their sacrificial blades. Tragically, those most social of instruments, knives, have cut off the ‘cooking animal’ from its world and each other.