{"id":1288,"date":"2015-05-03T06:44:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T12:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/?p=1288"},"modified":"2015-05-03T06:44:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T12:44:03","slug":"culture-how-we-create-us-and-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/culture-how-we-create-us-and-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture…how we create “us” and “them.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Food<\/a>This is a fascinating article from the perspective of anthropology. \u00a0Culture is created through a process of separating “us” from “them.” \u00a0And food is certainly one of the ways we do that. \u00a0For example, if you are member of a religious culture that does not drink alcohol, the group ethic says, “We don’t pollute our bodies with alcohol. \u00a0They do. \u00a0Therefore, they are polluted.” \u00a0Dietary rules are often used as ways of identifying “us” and reinforcing group solidarity. \u00a0And we’re not saying this is bad. \u00a0Group solidarity is what culture is all about. \u00a0Every group has to define who “we” are, and social rules are largely how we do it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Just as a personal example, we say, “Bison is a pure clean meat. \u00a0We eat bison. \u00a0We don’t eat unclean animals,” and by that we mean animals filled with growth hormones and antibiotics. \u00a0Now, of course, we do eat unclean animals all the time when we’re away from home. \u00a0Nonetheless, the group ethic that identifies our group–the group we think we belong to–has dietary rules. \u00a0They’re just not hard and fast rules, as is generally the case with a religion-based diet. \u00a0But in a way, aren’t we ascribing a “religious” value to our diet? \u00a0Ah, there’s a hint in there somewhere that growth hormones and antibiotics in food are “evil” and “impure” and, well…maybe even “ungodly.” \u00a0 THAT is what Alan Levinowitz is talking about in this article. \u00a0http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2015\/05\/the-puritanical-approach-to-food\/392030\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Does your diet have “religious” values?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a fascinating article from the perspective of anthropology. \u00a0Culture is created through a process of separating “us” from “them.” \u00a0And food is certainly one of the ways we do that. \u00a0For example, if you are member of a religious culture that does not drink alcohol, the group ethic says, “We don’t pollute our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,19,243,66,94,96,244,123],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1288\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}