Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Lévi-Strauss postulates that the raw/cooked axis is...

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Transcript of Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Lévi-Strauss postulates that the raw/cooked axis is...

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss

• Lévi-Strauss postulates that the raw/cooked axis is characteristic of all human culture, with elements falling along the "raw" side of the axis being those of "natural" origin, and those on the "cooked" side being of "cultural" origin - i.e. products of human creation. Symbolically, cooking marks the transition from nature to culture, by means of which the human state can be defined in accordance with all its attributes

The culinary triangle is a concept described by Claude Lévi-Strauss involving three types of cooking; these are boiling, roasting, and smoking, usually done to meats.

• The boiling of meat is looked at as a cultural way of cooking because it uses a receptacle to hold water, therefore it is not completely natural. It is also the most preferred way to cook due to the fact that neither any of the meat or its juices are lost. In most cultures, this form of cooking is most represented by women and is served domestically to small closed groups, such as families.

• Roasting of meat is a natural way of cooking because it uses no receptacle. It is done by directly exposing the meat to the fire. It is most commonly offered to guests and is associated with men in many cultures. As opposed to boiling, meat can lose some parts, thus it is also associated with destruction and loss.

• Smoking meat is also a natural way of cooking. It is also done without a receptacle and in the same way as roasting. It is a slower method of roasting, however, which makes it somewhat like boiling.

• The cook, in turn, can be viewed as a cultural agent whose function is to "mediate the conjunction of the raw product and the human consumer," the operation of which has the effect of "making sure the natural is at once cooked and socialized."

Psychotechnical Achievement

• Profusion• Immediacy• Abundance• Diversity• Sensorial• Synergy: Whole is greater than the simple sum

of its parts

Foraging

YUM?

Denaturalization

Not ME

“Thou shall not kill…”