1. Academic Article Summary
In this seminal work, anthropologist David Sutton explores how food and food practices serve as powerful mediums for encoding, storing, and recalling memory.
He argues that taste, smell, and the embodied rituals of cooking and eating are central to the formation of personal and collective identities. Moving beyond food as mere sustenance, Sutton examines how culinary traditions act as “sensory anchors” that connect individuals to their cultural pasts, facilitate the transmission of heritage across generations and geographies, and become sites of negotiation in contexts of migration and change. The book blends ethnographic richness with theoretical depth, positioning the kitchen and the meal as crucial spaces for understanding how memory is lived and felt through the body.
2. Contribution to My Project
This book contributes to my project by providing a theoretical framework to understand my own sensory experiences in Philadelphia. It gives me the language to analyze why searching for familiar tastes and smells is not just a nostalgic act but a fundamental process of identity maintenance and adaptation. Sutton’s concept of food as a “sensory anchor” directly explains my strategy of using comforting familiar smells to navigate the standard strange smells of a new culture. It elevates my personal documentary from a collection of observations to a critical examination of how to use sensory memory to build a sense of belonging.
Furthermore, this article makes me believe my research of focusing on tiny, daily rituals to access these much larger themes of cultural negotiation and identity more.
3. Done and To-do
This week I’ve been mainly reading Sutton’s book to find theoretical support for the project. Though I haven’t started filming yet, I bought a DJI Pocket 3 to make it easier to shoot anytime around town later.
Next week I plan to go out and gather material. I’ll use my camera to capture scenes that catch my interest.
Reference
Sutton, D. E. (2001). Remembrance of repasts. (No Title).