Preface:

The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once remarked, “Food is good to think with.” That is exactly what we did in this course, thinking with food. What can the study of food tell us about what people care about and desire, about production and consumption, eating and bodies, labor and buying, ritual and meaning, and globalization and local change? To get at these issues and many others, we looked at an enduring, troubling, and almost universally recognized icon and symbol of America and American power – McDonald’s. What can be learned about the changes and continuities in American life and habits since World War II by studying McDonald’s? What can a Big Mac, a large order of fries, and a tall cup of Coke tell us about US domestic life and the power of the United States in the post-World War II era? What can we learn from what we eat and what we don’t eat? What can McDonald’s tell us about work and the economy, about culture, and about global power? In a larger sense, how is studying food a good model for interdisciplinary thinking and scholarship in general? To answer these questions, we read texts from reporters, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists and we engaged in our own ethnographic projects.