Abstract
What does the humanities and social sciences approach to food (food studies) owe to the concepts of civilization and identity? In an attempt to answer this question, three scientific movements will be explored: (1) Norbert Elias's "process of civilization" and its theoretical roots in German sociology, which distinguishes between "culture" and "civilization"; (2) Maxime Rodinson's "influences between civilizations" and their place in the controversies between mystical Islamology and Marxism in the 1960s; and (3) Roger Bastide's "interweaving of civilizations" and its relationship to French anthropology.
In addition to their theoretical roots, we will examine the place of food in the relationship to empires within these three veins: treatises on good manners and the apparatus of social norms for Elias, cookbooks and culinary practices for Rodinson, and food in Afro-Brazilian rituals and symbolic systems for Bastide. Finally, an analysis of the relationship between the concept(s) of identity and civilization will show the contributions of the sociology of food and food studies, which attempt to go beyond the tautologies of culturalism by positing food models as a site for reading, maintaining, transmitting and (re)constructing social identities.
