Interview – anthropologyworks

Guest post by Julia Friederich, Jessica Grebeldinger, Stephanie Harris, Jacqueline Hazen, and Casey McHugh

The following is an edited transcript of an interview with Philippe Bourgois, the Richard Perry University Professor of Anthropology and Family and Community Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Barbara Miller conducted the interview on October 26, 2010, as part of her introductory cultural anthropology class at the George Washington University. Her 280 students had just finished reading In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, and several of them submitted questions for the interview.

Anth_Class_Pic_2 — Skyping with Philippe. Photo credit: Elliott School of International Affairs, GW

BDM: First, please tell us why you decided to do your dissertation fieldwork in the United States?

PB: I didn’t! I began my dissertation research with the Miskitu Indians in Nicaragua. But the Nicaraguan Revolution, a popular guerrilla movement that eventually overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, was trying to develop an independent socialist government at the time, and the US, through the CIA, destabilized the situation. The CIA distributed machine guns among the people and it turned into civil war. So I went to Costa Rica and Panama where I did research on the United Fruit Company’s banana plantations, and really that’s what eventually brought me to East Harlem. I thought if I can study ethnic conflict in Central America, I should study ethnic conflict and its political economy in my own country. I wanted to look at segregation and what I call “de facto inner city apartheid” in the US. So I went up to East Harlem in New York City and started my new research project there while I was writing my dissertation about the ethnic divide-and-conquer strategy of a US multinational corporation in Costa Rica and Panama. It became my first book: Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation.

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Steve Raichlen, author of Planet Barbecue!, BBQ USA, and The Barbecue Bible.
Photo credit: Steve Raichlen

Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell

Are there any debates more heated than two barbecue enthusiasts hailing from different corners of the country going at it over whose style of ‘cue is better? From the vinegar tang of pulled pork in the Carolinas to the dry rubs of Memphis ribs to the earthy mutton of Kentucky to the sweet beef brisket of Texas, few foods are the subject of such enthusiasm and regionalism. But why stop there?

People across the globe use smoke and fire to coax new flavors out of food. American barbecue is itself the result of influences from all over the world, and this is no more apparent than in the writing and recipes of Steve Raichlen. His first book, The Barbecue Bible, was more than just recipes: compiled over the course of four years and 200,000 miles of world travels, it covers backyards, street stalls, seaside fires, and hickory pits from Georgia to, well, Georgia.

Since then, he’s been expanding an American barbecue vocabulary once limited to burgers and Boston butts to include banana leaves and branzino. After four successful seasons hosting “Barbecue University” on PBS, he has kicked off a new show, “Primal Grill” and released his 27th book, Planet Barbecue!: 309 Recipes, 60 Countries. He is the recipient of the IACP Julia Child Award and two James Beard Foundation Book Awards.

I am grateful to Steve Raichlen for taking time to answer my questions on culture and barbecue around the world and to explain how one turns a background in French literature into grilling expertise.

GHC: Why is barbecue so compelling to you, compared to other ways of preparing food?

SR: Four reasons: flavor, drama, history, and culture.

Nothing intensifies flavor like the high dry heat of the grill. Especially when you grill over wood or charcoal.

Nothing has the drama of cooking meat (or any food) over the dancing flames of a live fire.

Barbecue is intimately intertwined with human history, in ways both obvious and unexpected. For example, the discovery of eating meat cooked with fire by a human ancestor called Homo erectus about 1.8 million years ago had a profound effect on human evolution. Advanced reasoning, speech, our communal social system, technology, and even the division of labor–all stem from barbecue (in the sense of cooking meat with live fire).

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