Date：September 18,15:00～17:30
Place：Multimedia Room (F214) at 2nd Floor of Fusokan, Imadegawa Campus, Doshisha University
http://www.doshisha.ac.jp/access/ima_campus.html
Speakers:
Mrs. Deborah Gewertz（Professor, Dept. of Anthropology-Sociology, Amherst College）
Mr. Frederick Errington（Distinguished Professor, Anthropology, Emeritus , Trinity College）
Topic：“The Noodle Narratives: A Work-in-Progress”
Clifford Geertz said that anthropologists go to small places to address big issues. Extending this view, we “go” to a small commodity, instant noodles, to address big issues pertaining to geopolitical connections and disjunctions. Momofuko Ando’s innovation -- flash fried in oil (often in palm oil), dehydrated, precooked, and easy to prepare - is now eaten by almost everyone, but in varying amounts and for diverse reasons. For example, college students and Silicon Valley programmers consuming instant noodles in their work environments as snacks are linked with, as well as importantly differentiated from, urban dwellers eating instant noodles as a major source of affordable food and displaced persons eating them in relief packages.
In this paper, we probe these connections and disjunctions, revealing important domains of contemporary practice. The “noodle narratives” we tell concern scientific food development, international food marketing, human nutrition, environment sustainability (given oil palm production), and relief feeding. This is to say, we show that instant noodles make much happen and show much happening of sociocultural, economic, political, personal, and global significance.