基础英语Iunit4--2010年专四阅读(文化与食物).docVIP

2010年阅读TEXT D Cultural rules determine every aspect of food consumption. Who eats together defines social units. For example, in some societies, the nuclear family is the unit that regularly eats together. The anthropologist Mary Douglas has pointed out that, for the English, the kind of meal and the kind of food that is served relate to the kinds of social links between people who are eating together. She distinguishes between regular meals, Sunday meals when relatives may come, and cocktail parties for acquaintances. The food served symbolizes the occasion and reflects who is present. For example, only snacks are served at a cocktail party. It would be inappropriate to serve a steak?or?hamburgers. The distinctions among cocktails, regular meals, and special dinners mark the social boundaries between those guests who are invited for drinks, those who are invited to dinner, and those who come to a family meal. In this example, the type of food symbolizes the category of guest and with whom it is eaten. In some New Guinea societies, the nuclear family is not the unit that eats together. The men take their meals in a mens house, separately from their wives and children. Women prepare and eat their food in their own houses and take the husbands portion to the mens house. The women eat with their children in their own houses. This pattern is also widespread among Near Eastern societies. Eating is a metaphor that is sometimes used to signify marriage. In many New Guinea societies, like that of the Lesu on the island of New Ireland in the Pacific and that of the Trobriand Islanders, marriage is symbolized by the couples eating together for the first time. Eating symbolizes their new status as a married couple. In Other cultural rules have to do with taboos against eating certain things. In some societies, members of a clan, a type of kin (family) group, are not allowed to eat the animal?or?bird that is their totemic ancestor. Since they believe themsel