In today’s society it is important to let everyone know what you are eating, where you are eating and with whom you are eating as instantaneously as possible. This cultish practice of social media, of posting pictures of our food – letting others experience our experiences before we even do – is commonplace. I struggled to think how I could capture activity utilizing the tactics of the anthropological, essayist, and/or autobiographical modes, never realizing the answer was with me and around me the entire time.
I work in the service industry and having been employed with the same company for over 3 years, I often notice people capturing pictures of their food before eating (I’ve done it a time or two myself when presented with a particularly photographic cheeseburger). I couldn’t help but think, how would a person in Africa – someone like N!ai – look at this behavior? Better yet, how would John Marshall, if he were removed from the Western world or from the social-media-dominated-world look at this behavior? So for five days I decided to practice what most of us practice or at least have seen others practice.
Geertz explores this phenomena called culture by explicating expressions used in common society. These expressions, or in light of his specific example, a wink, seem tiny and insignificant to most of us acting within our own cultural contexts, but to an anthropologist or ethnographer, these social gestures are a “speck of behavior,” a “fleck of culture” (6). He mentions Max Weber, a philosopher infamous for suggesting that we make our meaning; a truck would be no different from any other vehicle if we did not say so, just as love would not debated as tangible or a fleeting emotion unless we knew a difference between the two. This “semiotic approach to culture” aids an ethnographer to converse with its subject, to better understand the culture they may be studying (24).
After reading the essay, I attempted to possess myself with these ideologies of ethnography. To be an ethnographer is to observe, removed yet not removed, and to write. I do not attempt to explain why people enjoy sharing their food with Internet-friends (a category of friends most of us have, a face you can only put a name to, someone you may have worked with once, a cousin’s friend he or she brought along on a family road trip four summers ago); rather, I decide to act out this cultural practice myself, to put myself in the field where culture is acting itself out both online and in real time. Geertz wrote that culture is “public” yet it is also “self-contained,” something existing within us yet is also brought forth by our own actions and vocalizations (11-12).
My photos seek to mimic what my friends and family (and Internet-friends) do, sometimes every day, and by this I am an anthropologist. I interpret the prowess of social media culture in today’s society by exploring and explicating it, creating a vocabulary to express the “role of culture in human life” (27).
In the end, the vocabulary sounds a lot like this: Social media is all about promoting oneself. We write statuses or post pictures to gain “Likes” or tiny, red-flushed hearts; having others be a part of our day may make us feel more significant or (pardon the subtle pun) liked. So when one posts a picture of their food, whether it is half-eaten, being cooked, or freshly on their table, is it to show off the food or to show off one’s ability to navigate social media? Does food-posting serve the function of power (“Look what I can do!” “Look what I’m eating!”) or does it serve the function of acceptance (“Wish you were eating this with me?”)? As Geertz notes, with anthropology nothing is ever completely answered, but it is the posing of questions that help gain understanding of different cultures and how they work within us (or even without us) every day.
2 Responses to “Five Days of Food (Doc. Mode #3)”
Candy, I think this piece is absolutely fascinating. Very rarely do we sit down and wonder why we feel it is necessary to share with the world what we are eating. This is something so common that every single person partakes in more than once a day, but yet we seem to be fascinated with sharing and documenting the feasts we have on a daily basis. I love that you documented everything you ate for five days, it really illustrates this social media phenomenon of sharing our meals. Your piece really made me think about what we are trying to achieve when we share anything, not just food, on social media whether it is an outfit, a date or a new adventure with friends. Are we sharing things to feel more connected or does sharing an event somehow validate it and make it more genuine if other people can see what is happening?
This is really interesting & tackles a similar idea to what I tried to do in my ethnographic photo essay. There is a part of our society that has created a new subculture focused on our phones and what we can do with them. I think part of it comes from the feelings associated with seeing the popularity of a post, while some of our phone interaction is simply a habit we’ve created. The feelings you identified with posting pictures really made me think about the underlying purpose. Is it for a sense of approval or popularity? Probably. It’s one of the many ways our culture interacts with each other (although some would argue it prevents us from truly interacting) and would seem so foreign to people of different cultures. Whether it’s good or bad, this is the phase our society is in right now and I think it’s important that people keep documenting this like you did in this photo essay.