Download The Good, The Bad And The Yummy: Food And What

The Good, The Bad
And The Yummy:
Food and What it Means
Within the Warren Wilson College Coming of Age Ritual
Wyn Miller
15 May, 2007
Table of Contents
Abstract
Part I Food and Other Parts of College Life: An Introduction
Chapter 1 Introduction: Coming to Cultural Capital
Personal Motivations
An Undergraduate’s Discovery of Cultural Capital
Refining My Research
Chapter 2 Past Research and Literature
An Introduction to Cultural Capital and the Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu
College as a Coming of Age Ritual
Past Research on College Culture
Methods
Part II Welcome to Wilson: Getting to Know the Site and Participants
From Crazy to Straight: Growing up at Wilson
Work Hard, Play Hard: The Twin Spheres of “College Life”
Negotiating Identity Within a Coming of Age Ritual
Part III Food and What (Or How) it Means to Wilson Kids
Chapter 1 Food: A Form of Cultural Capital
Alternative Types of Cultural Capital
Food: There’s Nothing Funny About It
Foodism: An Everyday Aesthetic
Countercuisine: Food as a Political Statement
Food as a Key Symbol
Food as a Religion
Chapter 2 Foodism: An Ambiguous Binary Opposition
Part IV Foodism and the Coming of Age Ritual
Food Dichotomy Linked to Other Dichotomies
Part V Appendices
List of Interviewees’ Pseudonyms and other data
Interview Questions
Drawings
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Abstract
I attempt to discover the roots of perceived elitism present in the environmentalism
practiced at Warren Wilson College in the 2000s. I investigate food as a key arena, finding
that the system of distinction between “good” and “bad” food constitutes an ambiguous
body of knowledge that serves as a form of cultural capital. I apply four anthropological
perspectives of food to the “foodism” found at the college: food as an aesthetic preference,
as a political statement, as a key symbol, and as a religion. I find that no matter what
approach taken, the system of distinction is still an integral factor that allows for the
implementation and reproduction of cultural capital, thus introducing elitism into the
environmental values of the college. I also view college as a coming of age ritual and explore
how the identity-forming aspect of this ritual intersects with the system of cultural capital
described above.
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Part I
Food and Other Parts of College: An Introduction
Personal Motivations
When I first came to Wilson,1 I imagined it as a place where an institution and a
community practiced the values that I held, and gave opportunities for all members of the
community to be involved with what I considered the good things in life.
Environmentalism, social equality and simple living were at the core of my value set. Like
other prospective students of the College, I was excited and hopeful as to what the
institution had in store, and what it was capable of.
Yet during my time here I have come upon a bothersome realization: Warren Wilson
is, more than it knows, “not for everyone.” From my first year here, I came to understand
that the kids where I grew up—farmers through and through—would not come to this
college, and would not last long if they did. Throughout my time at the College, I have
come to know closely several individuals who were not “a good fit.” What I mean by this is
that they seemed to “lose out” in the Wilson way of things. I think most people, upon
hearing this, would say that their personalities just didn’t “fit.” What I have come to
understand is that personality does not have all that much to do with it. Rather, one’s
demographic background—more plainly put, their socioeconomic status—is one of the
biggest deciding factors in whether or not they will turn out to be “good fits” at Warren
Wilson College.
To be honest, I must point to one instance in particular that astounds me and stays
with me as I consider the issues in my research. I knew a girl my freshman year, very closely,
who was on “the losing end,” as I see it. She was an incredibly sweet girl, who loved people
and loved the land as much as anyone. She was interested in environmentalism but had not
grown up with the environmentalist discourse around her. She had come to Wilson because
she loved the world, and she wanted to learn about issues that Warren Wilson considers
important—basically the same reasons that brought me to the school. Yet in my fourth year,
1
I will henceforth refer to Warren Wilson College as simply “Wilson.”
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Savannah2 (as I will call her) is no longer here. She “failed out” her third semester. Her first
semester, when I knew her best, Savannah had chronic problems finding the “balance”
required of college students. She had problems with drugs, sexual relationships and work
ethic. She also had very few close friends and felt isolated by the “community.”
It bothered me that Savannah had so many problems at this school because it didn’t
seem like her fault. Unlike myself, (I come from a perfectly “clean” and safe background)
Savannah came from a family and a background that seemed like a scary movie to newly outof-the-nest me, as a freshman. Savannah’s father was a crackhead and a criminal.
Continuously in and out of jail, her father periodically stole money from the family and
physically and verbally abused his wife and children. Her mother worked minimum-wage
jobs. Savannah had what some refer to as a “troubled background.” She was also a firstgeneration college student.
As a freshman with no friends, and Savannah’s dorm neighbor, I grew very close to
her. I began to see the reoccurring problems in her life as a disease that I could not fix, but
only sympathize with (even though I, luckily, was unscathed by the problems). As much as
she seemed to want to do her work, to want to believe in her capacity to be a functioning
member of the community, Savannah inevitably could not fulfill her obligations. Being the
first person with this kind of life that I’d ever met, I was deeply impacted by my experiences
with Savannah. I have never forgotten how sad I felt when I learned that she was leaving
the college, never to return. I remembered wondering why it was that someone who had
seemingly lost out in all other areas of her life had to also lose out at a place that was meant
to be just, good, righteous, wonderful—at least in my mind.
Since Savannah I have known many other people who seemed to be in a similar
situation. She is one of the many students who come to the college with problems, only to
have those problems exacerbated by the pressures of living in a small community. As an
anthropologist, there seems to be all too much of a pattern as to who it is that ends up losing
out on Wilson. The idea that children from demographically “lower” status don’t do as well
in institutionalized education is not new, and this no doubt applies to all levels of education,
including college. Yet why at Wilson, my idealized utopia, does this have to take place?
Why, at a place that strives for equality, must social hierarchy be reproduced? And why, of
2
Savannah, and all other names in the document, are pseudonyms.
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all things, must environmentalism—the interest, issue and value that I held in highest
regard—seem to be elitist?
This has been the biggest question that I have wrestled with in my time at Wilson,
and it has become, in the past two years, the focus of my research. So from the outset, my
research has been a personal issue, motivated by my values and my life experience. With this
stated, I would like to insist that though it may be motivated by personal reasons, the
answers I have found to my own questions should be relevant for a much larger audience
than merely myself. I have found that everyone unknowingly perpetuates this hierarchy in
their daily lives. We are all equally to blame, and all equally not to blame.
An Undergraduate’s Discovery of Cultural Capital
As I began studying anthropology, I found that I was not alone in questioning why
some certain “types” of people seemed to lose out in various areas of our society.
Anthropologists seemed to be asking that question in many different ways. I was
immediately intrigued by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, which to me seemed to
be the answer to my question. Bourdieu worked in the 1970s and 1980s to develop an idea
called cultural capital, which, as he saw it, was a vessel for the reproduction of social
hierarchy. Bourdieu said “taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier” (Distinction 1984).
Although seemingly complex, the statement is actually implicit common sense: people have
tastes about different aspects of the material world, and based upon their tastes, they are
either assumed to be “high” or “low” class. An example that sums up this idea is the
difference between someone who is “tasteful” and someone who is “tacky.” I observed that
Savannah and others like her seemed to be what people considered tacky and therefore I
imagined that cultural capital was the answer to my question. This became my research
question: How does cultural capital play out on campus and how does it impact students’
lives?
As I began to research, however, I realized that my original idea of “cultural capital”
as one entity was not only ambiguous but also incredibly broad. I saw that people
differentiate themselves in many ways: the clothes they wear, the dorms they live in, the jobs
they hold, the grades they make, the drugs they use, the alcohol they consume, the music
they listen to, etc. However, I began to see, among many students, an emphasis on
something I hadn’t ever really seriously considered before: food. Whereas I had thought
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originally that food was merely a snobbish preference for some people who fancied
themselves “aware” of the environmental and social impacts of what we consume, I learned
that food is much more than that. For a large portion of the student body at Warren Wilson
College, food is a definitive aspect of one’s personality. Sometimes it even seems to be so
important as to constitute something (anthropologically speaking) sacred. I became more
interested in food as my research progressed, and eventually I felt assured that food, more so
than anything else, held extremely important meaning for Wilson students.
Refining My Research
The focus of my research has changed considerably from start to finish.
After initially investigating in terms of aesthetics and cultural capital, I then started being
interested in college as a coming of age ritual. I have come around to seeing that, with
college as a coming of age ritual, the important play of cultural capital does take place,
though it exceeds the boundaries of what I had originally planned to investigate. Rather
than thinking of cultural capital as emanating from aesthetics, I have learned that cultural
capital emanates from any type of exclusive knowledge. The conclusions I have made from
my research can be summed up in the following statements:

Cultural capital at Warren Wilson is the primary way in which social hierarchy is
reproduced.

The College must be viewed as an institution that provides for a coming of age
ritual—within which individual identity and relation to shared communal values is
key in socialization.

Food constitutes the most important identifying symbol within the community.3

At Wilson, foodism identifies someone who is more “aware” of communal issues
and values. (Foodism is the distinction between “good” and “bad” food.4)

Foodism may be viewed from a variety of anthropological approaches, all applicable
to the Wilson community:
o Food as an aesthetic arena
o Food as a political statement
3
4
Here and otherwise I intend “community” to refer to the student community of the College.
A more thorough definition of foodism will be introduced in part III.
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o Food as a key symbol
o Food as a religion

No matter which approach taken, foodism constitutes an ambiguous system of
distinction.

Some students learn this system of distinction; others do not. Typically the
demographically “higher” population is more able or willing to learn this distinction.

Foodism thus serves as a form of cultural capital, able to differentiate between high
and low classes.

This cultural capital is the vessel for the reproduction of social hierarchy in the
student community.

Environmentalism, when made manifest in food preferences, becomes elitist through
the process described above.
Throughout this essay, I would like to trace the process through which environmentalism
becomes elitist through all the different aspects I have witnessed in my research and
hopefully show successfully that food is not “merely food” but rather a key player in this
process.
Past Research and Literature
An Introduction to Cultural Capital and the Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital was set forth in his book Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984). In this study, Bourdieu set out to “determine how
the cultivated disposition and cultural competence that are revealed in the nature of the
cultural goods consumed, and in the way they are consumed, vary according to the category
of agents...” (1984:13). He carried out a survey that investigated peoples’ tastes in fine art in
relation to their socioeconomic status (which he defined mostly by their educational
background). Bourdieu stated that
Two basic facts were thus established...the very close relationship linking cultural
practices to educational capital [and] social origin...(13)
Thus one finds at the higher the level of education, the greater is the proportion of
respondents who, when asked whether a series of objects would make beautiful
photographs, refuse the ordinary objects of popular admiration—a first
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communion, a sunset or a landscape—as “vulgar” or “ugly,” or reject them as
“trivial,” “silly,” a bit “wet,” or…naively “human”; and the greater is the proportion
who assert the autonomy of the representation with respect to the thing represented
by declaring that a beautiful photograph, and a fortiori a beautiful painting, can be
made from objects socially designated as meaningless—a metal frame, the bark of a
tree, and especially cabbages (35).
As Bourdieu saw it, peoples’ tastes grew more complex as you climbed up the rungs of the
societal ladder. He based his data on the corresponding class status and taste in art. He
concluded that the working-class people in his study had less complex explanations of their
aesthetic preference.
Bourdieu’s theory has undergone great critique due to several reasons. First, the
economically-based model of his work only accounted for upward mobility on an imagined
societal ladder. Also, his data didn’t seem to be overwhelmingly suggestive of his
conclusion; there was a relatively low correspondence between class and taste (Halle 1993:9).
Lastly, the fact that Bourdieu only focused on peoples’ conceptions of fine art seems
extremely limiting, as fine art may very well only have important social meaning in one sector
of society.
Although his theory has undergone much criticism, scholars who have developed his
work further show that the basic idea of cultural capital is still relevant and applicable. Sarah
Thornton creates the idea of subcultural capital as a similar means of distinction that takes
place within a limited group that defines itself against an imagined “mainstream” (1996).
This theory seems to successfully apply Bourdieu’s theory to smaller and more specific
communities. John Forrest, on the other hand, has shown that one can dispose of
Bourdieu’s class-based model altogether. Instead, he advocates using an approach that he
calls “everyday aesthetics”—basically all one’s judgments of different aspects of the sensual5
experience.
In my research, I have found that although his original conception of cultural capital
may still be a useful tool, it can be separated from the ideas of aesthetics, art, and
socioeconomic status. I have found that the one crucial aspect of cultural capital is that it
hinges upon a system of distinction: distinction of any and every kind may provide a basis
for cultural capital. As such, I have applied four different anthropological approaches to
food—my main subject area—to see how to best interpret patterns of food preference. I
I intend “sensual” to refer to aspects of lived experience—material or otherwise—that can be
sensed; visual, verbal, audible, palatable and other such experiences.
5
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have found that no matter what approach taken, the system of distinction is the one crucial
element for the formation of cultural capital.
The first approach, food as an aesthetic arena, is akin to what Forrest used, and as
such I will investigate the usefulness of his theory of everyday aesthetics in my own research
criteria. Secondly I will look at food as a political statement. David Halle, in a study of fine
art in Manhattan, found that aesthetic preference was used as a vehicle for promoting and
displaying one’s political beliefs (1993). Although his work is interesting when compared
with the situation at Wilson, it is still based on fine art and therefore not inclusive enough to
help describe my participant community. Therefore I turn to Warren Belasco, who studies
what he terms the “countercuisine” of the 1960s (2005). The health food movement from
this time symbolized a national political statement against the status quo; it was embodied by
food choices. At Wilson this same type of political association definitely describes the
students’ conception of food choice.
Related to political undertones are the shared communal values associated with food.
As Sherry Ortner described a key symbol, it can elaborate and summarize communal values.
I have found that food is the single most important key symbol on campus and can both
function to elaborate and summarize communal values. In fact, food is such an important
symbol that it nears “sacred” status and lastly I will view food as a religion. Jill Dubisch
described the health food movement of the 1960s and 1970s as a religion and many of her
original statements can be applied directly to the Wilson student community. Furthermore, I
have found specific things about foodism at Wilson that I see as religious aspects: the idea of
a golden age, the distinction between mana and taboo foods, and the sacred quality of
potlucks.
College as a Coming of Age Ritual
Dubisch’s study was different than mine in that she was not studying a “closed
community” made of mostly homogenous young adults who are in a small liberal arts
college. This brings me to the secondary focus of my thesis: Warren Wilson College seen as
a coming-of-age ritual. Although I did not originally intend to look into this aspect of
students’ experience, I have found that I cannot separate my intended subject material
(cultural capital) from this aspect of college life. The fact that Wilson students are
undergoing a transition that changes them from idealistic young eighteen-year-olds into
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responsible adults is crucial to the understanding of the cultural capital of food and all other
related discourses. The theory and structure behind the coming of age apparatus is
extremely useful in understanding how and why students choose to construct and display
their identity in the ways they do. Thus I will draw upon past elaborations of the coming of
age ritual.
Past Research on College Culture
Much of the past research on college communities has focused on the experience of
minority populations in educational institutions (Harbour 2003; Lemay Jr. 2004). With the
emphasis on “diversity” comes a corresponding interest in the exclusive behavior that comes
from “culture clash” within the institution. I actually am also interested in what I consider to
be culture clash, but without the emphasis on differing ethnic backgrounds. I have found
that there is ample room for culture clash between people with the same color of skin.
A few excellent studies, however, have been made of college as a coming of age
ritual, and I will use many of their tools in my analysis of Wilson. Penelope Eckert studied
high school culture that, though dealing with participants of a younger age, nonetheless helps
clarify what classism is and how it is reproduced (1989). Rebekah Nathan studied college
culture from the insider’s point of view, enrolling in college as a freshman and researching
from that perspective (2005). Many of her insights into college life have been extremely
helpful for me in taking what I knew, implicitly, and giving it explicit explanations. Michael
Moffat studied college culture as well, and his 1980s study of Rutgers University students at
some points seems to be describing the students of Wilson in the 2000s (1989). I will use
the work of all three scholars to help put the Warren Wilson study in perspective, as it is but
one example of a much larger phenomena: that of a modern coming of age ritual.
Methods
Getting at cultural capital seemed to be, from the outset, something that was
complex and multifaceted. I never imagined that I could gather my data through
quantitative inquiry, mostly due to the knowledge that Bourdieu’s survey method did not
really support his theory. His survey did not adequately show that the distinction that his
participants posited was engrained in understandings of class, regardless of what tastes people
actually expressed. At least, in the United States, where individualism is at the core of
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peoples’ ontology, the ability to express one’s own opinion as an “exception” makes a survey
method inaequate. That is, though people may be completely aware of a taste hierarchy,
they may not always put their own tastes at the top (and this also has to do with Bourdieu’s
overemphasis on upward mobility). I used three main methods in my study: observation,
interviews and participant drawing. A method that shows individuals’ knowledge of a
system of distinction, regardless as to what tastes they actually display, is necessary. One
factor that makes this so important in my own research is college students’ emphasis on
irony. A qualitative inquiry is required to understand that even though students may hang a
Britney Spears (pop singer) poster on their dormitory room door, they do not necessarily like
her music. (They may severely dislike it.) Thus I chose to use qualitative methods that look
into depth at students’ narratives and explanations.
Observation. As I am currently a senior at the college, I have actually been observing
Wilson culture for the past four years—just much more keenly during the last year. Most of
this data comes from verbal observation; listening to what people say, often at nearby lunch
tables or in the dormitories, and sometimes in the workplace or classroom. But I have also
used visual observation—looking at what people do, what they wear, what fliers hang on
public walls, how students’ rooms are decorated, etc. Since my research has come to focus
around food, I have more recently come to pay careful attention to what people eat and how
they describe different foods.
Interviews. I carried out twelve formal interviews, lasting from thirty minutes to an hour
and a half. I also carried out countless informal interviews (if I had to count I would guess
around twenty-five to thirty). All my interviewees were students at the College. (Although I
spoke to staff and faculty, nothing I did could be considered an interview.) I chose my
participants through informed selection: I looked for people who were different from me
(seeing as I already had the chance to observe people similar to me in daily routine) and tried
to pick from a variety of characteristics. I differentiated people based on dormitory, gender,
age, class standing, day student versus on-campus, number of years at Wilson (different from
class standing because people transfer), dress, peer group, work crew, and substance
preference (i.e. smoker versus non-smoker, drinker versus non-drinker). None of the formal
interviews were with close friends, although probably five to ten informal interviews were
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with people I would consider relatively close friends. Although my interview questions
originally asked participants about their stories, their general impression of the student body,
and their place in it, as I became more interested in food, specifically, I started to ask surveytype questions that focused on their specific preferences, for food and other things.
Example of this type of question would be “What is your favorite kind of chocolate?” and
“Describe your idea of the perfect meal.” (I had begun to ask these questions because
through observation I had observed very specific trends in peoples’ tastes, such as a taste for
dark over milk chocolate, garlic, hard over soft cheese, etc. Interestingly, however, once I
began to question individuals about this, I found hardly anymore pattern that Bourdieu did
of fine art preference. It seems that quantitative inquiry is not the best way to capture the
many important aspects of taste.)6
Participant Drawing. Realizing that the art of interviewing takes a long time to master, I
began looking for alternative forms of data collection to bring out the data that seemed
present but hidden within my interviewees’ narratives. When talking to people there is a lot
that they take for granted, especially when the researcher and participants are “peers”—in
this case, similarly aged people both attending the same educational institution. Thus I
wanted to find a way for students to express the hidden structures and categories that they
seemed unwilling or incapable of talking about. Thus I decided to give participants the
chance to draw rather than speak. What I found was that a picture really is worth a
thousand words, because (as a primarily visually-oriented society) so much information is
present in the simple underlying structure of a drawing that you barely even need the content
for it to still be meaningful. For two dinner-times, I sat at a table in Cowpie and invited
people to come draw with the crayons and colored pencils I had provided. Although I was
situated in Cowpie, about half of the eighteen drawings I received were by people who had
actually eaten in Gladfelter.7 I showed participants five prompts, and told them they could
either respond to a prompt, or just draw whatever they wanted. Most of my participants did
respond to a prompt, but interpreted them as starting points rather than rules. Although my
two most-used and most-important prompts asked the drawer to illustrate a kind of binary
Both my original interview questions and the revised version can be found in Appendix A and B.
Identifying data alongside interviewees’ pseudonyms may be found in Appendix C.
7
Cowpie and Gladfelter are the two cafeterias available to students.
6
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opposition, (“good versus bad food,” and “you as a freshman versus as a senior”) those
dualities were based on observed categories. People constantly referred to good and bad
foods as well as the changes made between one’s freshman and senior year. The drawing
prompts, in other words, were responses to data rather than impositions of etic
categorization. A copy of all five prompts can be found in Appendix D.
The drawings (and selected details) are used throughout to illustrate my points.
Although I do not use all the drawings in my essay, all extra unused drawings can be found
in Appendix E. There is markedly less information illustrating the binary oppositions I have
found present in the unused drawings than in those found in the essay. Therefore the
drawings selected for use could be considered unrepresentative. What I would like to
emphasize is that my investigation sought to illuminate the ambiguous, learned quality of the
oppositions—they make a system of distinction that constitutes cultural capital. The
distinction is not present for everyone, so there is no need to be representative: I am saying
that this knowledge is exclusive, after all.
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Part II
Welcome to Wilson: Getting to Know the Site and Participants
As a student at Warren Wilson, as at any college, one must undergo certain forms of
socialization—moving like sheep as a big peer group, jointly using public space, waiting on
and watching each other—in order to survive as a college student. During these group
procedures, one finds that there is ample room to express their identity and also many
different means by which to do so.
As I began to study Wilson students, I was initially not aware of the fact that
this format for lifestyle in the community played a very large role in the way that cultural
capital functioned. However, as I have listened to students’ narratives, I have come to
understand that something underlying all their experiences is the idealized pattern of change
that takes place in a person during their four years at college: in a word, college as a coming
of age ritual. Recognizing this, I began to see how everything, including food and peoples’
conceptions of it, must be seen within the framework of people interacting within a state of
liminality, or, the middle stage of a coming of age ritual, where one’s identity is created from
a “clean slate.”
In this section, then, I aim to describe that mode of interaction, and the
forces that guide and frame interaction within the student community, which characterize all
aspects of student life. Hopefully I will show that Wilson, as a closed community with
explicit shared values, is a place in which people are pressured to respond in very specific
ways to the many obligations presented to them. After first defining the coming of age
ritual, I will discuss how college constitutes a modern version of this ritual. Then I will show
the specific conditions that Wilson presents.
Part of modern American middle class society’s common sense is that college, and
the attainment of a bachelor’s degree, is an integral step in one’s career—a career forming
the idea of adulthood and maturity in this work-oriented society. Although not everyone in
the country can afford college (and others do not choose to enroll) for many people the four
years of a typical college career distinguish adulthood from youth. Defined by Ben Feinberg,
rites of passage (another term for coming of age rituals), “move participants from one social
status to another” (2004:311). College does just this: young, inexperienced eighteen-yearolds leave their homes and families to come to an institution where they know no one and
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have no niche except for the one they create for themselves. They leave after four years as
employable adults who are “ready to face the real world.”
From Crazy to Straight: Growing up at Wilson
Students at Wilson are transformed from youths into adults, indicated to the outside
world through a degree, which functions as a type of merit badge. At Wilson, the coming of
age ritual functions through a particular set of discourses incorporating such themes as
idealism versus realism, identity through forms of consumption, and individuality.
Fundamentally, however, this transformation is the same as the one that both Moffat and
Nathan describe.
In his book The Rites of Passage Arnold van Gennep described three stages that make
up a coming of age ritual: first is separation, next, liminality and then reintegration (Feinberg
2004:311). Within the college ritual, liminality takes up the most time, usually four years
(could this be the longest coming of age ritual of all?).
The first stage, separation, is represented by the phrase “leaving the nest.” Eighteen
year-olds (the official age declaring adulthood in the federal world) leave their homes, usually
after a “last summer” wherein they were supposed to have enjoyed their last moments of
childhood. They leave their house after a meal between family members who bid them
farewell and give them gifts. The trip to college is usually made with a parent or two, who
help the kid unpack once they get there. Eventually the parents leave. Now the kid is
alone—they know no one around them and are in an unfamiliar environment. This is where
separation ends and liminality begins.
Turner describes the liminality stage as being when normal constraints are lifted and
all distinguishing traits of participants are erased, turning each individual into a “clean slate.”
In college, “kids” become “students,” egalitarian in their mutual lack of familiarity with the
system of which they are now a part. During the first week of school—the infamous
orientation week—all students are stripped of their past identities and get a chance to
remake themselves within the confines of college personhood. Experimentation in ways that
Mom and Dad would not have allowed is almost obligatory. Orientation is liminal: the usual
norms are thrown out, and it is “natural” for students to want to be “crazy” during this
period, experimenting with drugs, alcohol, illicit behavior and sexual promiscuity. Feinberg
states that “often participants are given the freedom to playfully overturn normal social
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conventions and taboos, demonstrating their position outside normal, everyday life”
(2004:311). From this early date, students begin to be classified—some will be crazy, fun
and wild; others will be boring, straight-laced and lame; or in the case of the drawer of figure
II.A, “shut-ins.” This liminal stage continues to some degree throughout the college career,
but peaks during the freshman year and often specifically during orientation week. Figures
II.A and II.B illustrate the liminal behavior associated with the freshman/orientation period.
Figure II.A
Figure II.B
For the next four years liminality continues, but the prospect of reintegration lingers
closer and closer on the horizon. Graduation ceremonies serve to represent one’s
reintegration—the third stage of the rite of passage. Students leave the period of liminality
and “start” the rest of their lives, a process encapsulated by the term “commencement.”
When seen from this perspective, it is no wonder that socializing is one of the most
important aspects of college for most students.8 The liminal nature of students’ lifestyles
during this period will have implications for the way that cultural capital plays out.
Work Hard, Play Hard: The Twin Spheres of “College Life”
The two statuses concerned with the college coming of age ritual are maturity and
immaturity. These have become, for Wilson students, idealized states or conditions. They
are not only associated with the end product—one becomes mature throughout college—
but also with day-to-day life: one lives out immaturity and maturity at different moments.
8
In my research, I found that the only people for whom socialization was not an important aspect
were those commonly referred to as “mature students.” For them, the degree is the important thing..
For mature students, college does not function as a coming of age ritual.
Miller 17
During the day students are usually expected to act responsibly; at night they are expected to
act “crazy.” The two ends of the spectrum are embodied by this tendency to act in
extremes, and thus maturity versus immaturity constitutes a binary opposition in the student
mindset. Related to this binary opposition is one that delineates between work and play.
This can be encapsulated by the phrase “work hard, play hard,” a way that Wilson students
often describe their own lifestyle. I now turn to the dichotomy underlying this phrase and
examine how it relates to the American work ethic.
The students’ remaining free time was given over to friendly fun with peers, to
the endless verbal banter by which maturing American youths polish their
personalities all through adolescence…Friendly fun was thus the bread and
butter of college life as the undergraduates enjoyed it at Rutgers in the 1980s
(1989:33).
Michael Moffat’s book, Coming of Age in New Jersey: College Life in the American University
describes college as the modern-day coming-of-age ritual at Rutgers University in the 1980s
(1989). Not only do Wilson students spend vast amounts of their time socializing with their
peers, but they also see that as their primary method of gaining “life experience” while at
college. Socializing is their primary agenda in developing their personalities, their identities,
and their sense of self. Although there is an obvious emphasis on getting a degree—one
isn’t seen as “finished” with college until they graduate—this emphasis pales in comparison
to the emphasis placed on living out the “college experience.”
This division between these two goals—academics and the college life—reveals an
underlying division of work and play present in our American mindset. This connection
with the American work ethic shines through in several areas of the college experience and
can be held generally responsible for the high stress levels endured by many students,
accompanied by regular points of departure from a “responsible” lifestyle: binge drinking,
illegal activities, and destructive behavior. As work is seen as the hard part of life, and play
for pleasure, the “friendly fun” that Moffat describes is what students really care about.
During my interviews I found that when I asked participants about their experience
at the college, they often began by talking about the “triad,” a catchphrase that is supposed
to encapsulate the majority of students’ experience. In the following excerpt, a student
responds to my questions about the college up-front as mostly concerning the
institutionalized parts of her life: work, service and academics. It is only later, when I
Miller 18
question her about more personal opinions, that she shows that a big part of her college
experience is based on the social environment in which she lives:
Wyn: Let’s just start out with, like, um, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Ronda: Um, m’ name is [Ronda], and I’m from Pittsboro North Carolina…and, I
chose to come to Warren Wilson because I like the work program, or at least I
thought I did, and so, um, yeah, I like the whole service-work thing, along with your
education, so, I just think the triad concept, that was about it.
Wyn: How would you describe Wilson to someone?
Ronda: Usually say it’s a triad/work school…25 hrs service, small private school, lot
of hippies—that’s what most people know it for, at least in North Carolina, so. I’s
like yeah, I see quite a few dredlocks, there’re other people too, it’s a farm school,
but I don’t say that cause not everyone’s on farm crew. It seems like one small
component.
Wyn: You’re thinking about not coming back next year?
Ronda: I don’t know if I want to be in college right now, I’m confused.
Wyn: Well, it’s good that you recognize that.
Ronda: It’s a muddle, I’m really like, I’m struggling to find my place here, too. Like,
I just feel out of place sometimes. I don’t know.
Wyn: What other type of college would you like to go to?
Ronda: I don’t know, another country, maybe, even though I don’t speak another
language. I’m just not into college—either little private ones where you get a lot of
cliques, or you have your huge one, and then you have to deal with like your
fraternities—but either one, you have to choose…
Initially Ronda pointed to the triad as her main reason for coming to college; later
she made it clear that her main reason for leaving college would be the social dimension. Like
Ronda, I sensed that most other students’ primary objective at college was socialization.
However, in an interview format, this objective was not something the participants were
going to mention. It is implicit fact of the college experience and therefore needs more
intuitive methods in order to bring it out.
The drawings participants produced were able to bring out such implicit knowledge.
Overwhelmingly, the drawings depicting the difference between people when they were
freshmen and when they were seniors focused on the number of friends at each time in their
college career. In the following drawings, academics were rarely mentioned at all, and when
they were, they were mentioned alongside one’s personal development. This suggests that if
one were to only grow academically, they would not really have passed through the coming
of age ritual. A well-rounded college student, in other words, balances academic growth
Miller 19
with a healthy dose of socialization. Again, this sentiment is encapsulated by the phrase
“work hard, play hard.”
Figure II.C
Figure II.D
Miller 20
Again, the point is not that academics do not exist in these students’ minds. Ashley, the
participant who drew Figure II.D considers herself a very career-oriented person and
emphasizes the fact that she is at Wilson in order to get a degree. With the end goal of
getting a degree, a person is free to decide how they will spend their time acheiving that goal.
The following excerpts from various participants show clearly the way that work and play are
considered to go hand-in-hand:
Wyn: Is Warren Wilson really that unique?
Ashley: I like to think it is, yeah. It really is not [for]—I mean you watch the people
who it’s not for leave, quickly. And some of those kids leave the first week of
school and some of them just don’t come back after a semester. And it really is a
unique place because of the fact that we all work, and because of the fact that we all
have to do service, and we all are in class, and only people who are really deter—
like, willing and really wanting to do, like, work in the farm or the garden—or, work
anywhere, in general, can really stay at the school because it’s a huge commitment to
come and work fifteen hours a week and then try to do school on top of that, and
then try to have a social life, is really tough, and like, even your work crews become
your social life, most of the time…it is definitely unique in my opinion, because of
the triad. It attracts a certain kind of person.
Wyn: Is there anyone that changed once they got here?
Caitlin: I know so many people that changed so much. I knew this one girl who the
first few weeks was crazy and always getting fucked up, and now she’s really
responsible, and does all her work.
Wyn: What about, like, bad changes?
Caitlin: Yeah, I had a friend who started doing lots of hallucinogenic drugs, and I
feel like I can’t communicate with her, now.
In Ashley’s depiction, the triad requirements seem to take precedence over her social
obligations. But this contrasts with her freshman/senior portrait from above. The fact is,
your institutionalized obligations will, when required, take priority. But this does not mean
that overall they mean more to the student than their life experience. Caitlin shows the twin
types of growth: one example goes from play to work, the other from work to play. Unlike
Ashley’s excerpt, Caitlin depicts imbalance rather than balance between the two realms of
college life. Both, however, belie a fundamental division of work and play and posit these
two lifestyles as opposites, in competition for a monopoly on the individual’s life.
The next excerpt illustrates Becca’s idea of how responsibility is integral to making it
through the college life:
Becca: You know, people understand that, um, when you come to Warren Wilson,
as a guest, or as a student, you, you will probably have to think outside of the,
pop—you know, pop culture box. Um, and get down to issues without, without,
Miller 21
you know, using what you’ve been told. So, making big, making powerful
statements on your own, and really like taking I guess a sense of responsibility, and
not relying on other people.
Wyn: Do students embody those values?
Becca: I think that responsibility in general in general is a new thing for a lot
incoming studs, so bc that is what this college is strongly about, um getting used to
it, and starting to actually feel it, as opposed to, you know, write it down in your
college essay, is a—is—can be difficult…I think that um as people start to learn to
take responsibility for themselves, because this place—at Warren Wilson you really
need to learn for yourself—people don’t like stepping you through things, um, a lot
of people don’t—a lot of people drop out…I think that’s one big reason why
people drop out, is because there’s very little guidance, sometimes, and they don’t
quite see how irresponsible they’re taking themselves in the future, responsibly.
I think that…the responsibility to be an individual, overwhelms people who think
that they, they already have that responsibility, and they realize once they come here
that dealing with expectations of other people, and grades…[is difficult]
As Becca shows, “responsibility” is a key word that reflects the fact that college, as a coming
of age ritual, is suppose to make “kids” “grow up.” Responsibility is a sign of being a
“mature” college student. Words such as mature and responsible stand in stark contrast to
words like crazy and wild, this opposition illustrating the idea of progression throughout
college from childhood to adulthood. In Table 1, I have listed the terms associated with
each side of this opposition.
Idealism
Play
rich white kid or
trustafarian
Immaturity
Irresponsible
Crazy, insane, freaked out
Out of it, fucked up
Slacker
Lazy
Realism
Work
working class or normal/average/everyday
American
Maturity
Responsible
Directed, sane, normal, straight
on top of things, got their shit together
Busy
Workaholic
Table 1.
Negotiating Identity Within a Coming of Age Ritual
One potential criticism to the idea of college as a coming of age ritual is that
everyone has a “different” experience, because everyone is “unique.” Even though every
formal interviewee referred to themselves in some way or another as an exception, one thing
I have learned is that, at least in this community, there really is no such thing as an exception.
Of course, students do live in different circumstances, but they all are pressured from the
Miller 22
same social and cultural factors, and after listening to enough stories, they start to seem
fundamentally identical. One way in which they are identical is that students overwhelmingly
do describe a transition that has taken place in their college career, pointing to the fact that
college functions as a coming of age ritual.
However, the way that students live out this coming of age ritual may encourage
exceptionalism. Ben Feinberg states that
Rites of passage9 may involve symbols that convey a message about the shared
cultural identity of the community…[Some rites of passage] symbolically reconfirm
the cultural value of individualism in the West, especially in the United States
(2004:312).
I have found that the Wilson version of college as a coming of age ritual combines the
“clean slate” aspect of liminality (wherein all past distinguishing features of participants are
swept away) with the “we”re not for everyone” individualism promoted by the institution
(which mirrors the emphasis on individuality found in the larger American society).
As a “clean slate” within the coming of age ritual, students (especially
underclassmen) seek for ways to create their own identity—an identity of their choosing.
Thus, students choose to do radically illogical things (according to an imagined mainstream
logic) such as climb trees, steal useless objects, wear “ridiculous” clothes, and generally act
awkward and strange. “Unique” is one of the most common terms used to describe the
idealized Warren Wilson student. Charlie described the archetypical Wilson student as
[Kids who have] done a lot of soul-searching. I love the individuality, people not
just fitting in the mold. It’s an easy place to be yourself, people won’t judge you
based on your religion or sexual orientation.
Charlie is a transfer student and at this point had only been at Wilson for a few weeks, yet
seemed already certain that people here were “individuals.” Within a system that has shared
values and a prescribed pattern of transition from youth to adult, students look for ways to
break out of those equalizing bonds by expressing a “unique” personality.
One important way that students express their identity is through the relationship
they display with the institution (and its values). In an effort to distinguish oneself, going
along with prescribed values is less remarkable than improving on those values or shunning
them. Thus students often either criticize Wilson values for being too conservative, or
hypocritical and elitist. Most often, they do both—vacillating between approval and disdain
for the institution.
9
Feinberg’s use of “rite of passage” is essentially synonymous with “coming of age ritual.”
Miller 23
In the act of creating identities, students use certain arenas in which to display their
tastes for others to see and gauge. Food, as a key arena,10 gives students a chance not only
to express their identity, but also to do so through negotiation of their relationship to the
institution and its prescribed values. Thus, while looking at food in the next section, we
must keep in mind that food is not just a method by which students show off their own
values, but by which students compete and create new identities that position them in
relation to the other entities around them (their peers, the institution, and most of all, the
“outside” or “mainstream”). Perhaps one reason that food has become such a central arena
is that students look for new ways to differentiate themselves within an a priori egalitarian
society.
By “key arena” I simply mean a very important arena, not to be confused with Sherry Ortner’s
notion of a key symbol, which I will discuss later.
10
Miller 24
Part III
Food and What (Or How) it Means to Wilson Kids
Pierre Bourdieu found that fine art was defined as bad or good according to status
groups by differing levels of complexity of explanation. Food fills a similar role at Wilson,
exercising peoples’ knowledge of important issues. But there is also a moral factor: people
are expected to care about shared values, and one way of proving that you care is through
food choices, through your means of consumption. This is not the first time that food has
come to represent both wider political understanding as well as personal choice. The current
foodism (the distinction between good and bad food) present at Wilson has grown in large
part out of the health food movement from the 1960s (and that of course was a reaction to
earlier food practices). In the following pages, I will trace the legacy of Bourdieu and the
advent of everyday aesthetics, then move on to the history of the health food movement,
and other attempts to understand food. Afterwards I will connect the food practices with
the coming of age ritual described above and see what this means for students’ lives.
Food: A Form of Cultural Capital
From early on, incoming students quickly realize that people watch what you eat.
This is made manifest by the speed with which students come to understand that it is not
acceptable to eat at fast food restaurants. Certainly, many of them may not have often eat at
fast food restaurants before coming to Wilson. However, once at Wilson, students learn to
deemphasize any consumption of fast food (or other bad food). Often when parents come
to visit students, the parents take them out to fast food or large expensive restaurants, both
of which have a negative connotation. Big expensive restaurants are considered to be elitist,
and reinforce the rich white kid image, while often still serving “bad” (a.k.a. not local or
organic) food. It is a common narrative for kids to only admit to going out with their
parents to a certain kind of eatery if they add that it was the parents’ idea, the parents’
money, the parents’ prerogative. Often an apologetic tone enters the student’s voice, as if
they need to apologize for their family’s lack of awareness of Wilson values. One student,
after showing familiarity with a certain “mainstream” restaurant, said in just such an
apologetic voice: “My parents used to take me there when I was a freshman. Yep, that’s the
kind of place they like to eat—they’re from Florida, and just don’t care, about…that stuff.
Miller 25
I’m always trying to get them to care about their diets, like ‘cause they eat really unhealthy,
but they just don’t know what that means, like what caring about it means.” The “taboo”
nature of fast food is well-known and often the word taboo is actually used to describe fast
food. In the following excerpt, Ashely talks about this taboo quality of fast food.
Wyn: What does Wilson not support or accept?
Ashley: Among students, corporate America is something kids don’t support. Fast
food is not popular. I went last weekend because the girl I was with went, but I
wouldn’t want to go, and when I got back, I felt weird. I felt awkward.
Wyn: Why do people hate fast food?
Ashley: They have deep-set opinions against corporate America, it’s really popular
around campus. Maybe it’s just the type of people we attract. People are fairly jerky
about it, too, like if there was a McDonald’s cup—I would never be responsible for
McDonald’s cup—Wilson is weird because most people condone corporate
America. But I think it’s rude to complain to other people if they do eat it.
The taboo against fast food is part of foodists’ common sense. However, this common
sense is varied—some people (and we can use Savannah as an example) are not aware of the
taboo. Others may be slightly aware of it but are so accustomed to fast food that they do
not follow the prescribed regulations. It is these people who are out of the loop, as far as
foodism goes. If they cannot express their values through food, then, they are assumed to
not have certain values and are therefore not considered “good” people.11
Alternative Types of Cultural Capital
Food, obviously, is not the only way in which people construct their identities. In
fact, people usually first describe people by the clothes they wear, then perhaps the music
they listen to, or the crew they work on. Food inevitably fits in there somewhere towards
the end of the description. I have found that there are different types of judgment required
for different arenas, and food in particular has a different system than other arenas, such as
clothes. When I have mentioned to people that food is one way in which people identify
themselves, they usually say, “But clothes do that too—why not study clothes?” Therefore I
Although I’ve never heard anyone refer to a person as “bad,” “good” is nonetheless a very
common descriptor for individuals. The word might be ambiguous, as it is not clear in what way
they are “good,” but the general idea is that they enjoy “good” things and they have “good” values.
An example of this would be when I heard someone say “Oh, man—there are so many good people
in the chorale this year!” after learning that several of his friends (many who lived in the Ecodorm)
were members of the chorale.
11
Miller 26
would like to take a minute to discuss the difference between food and the other arenas.
Since clothing seems to be the most obvious descriptor, I will use it as my main alternative.
Clothes. The generation at Wilson today has a general understanding that clothes are a
superficial way to judge a person. Even thought they nonetheless play a huge role in
identifying different groups of people, they seem to be sort of “used” or “taboo” (in the
popular anthropology terminology12) for reference points into someone’s values. It seems
that from a young age we are taught not to “judge a book by its cover” by basing our
opinions of someone upon how they dress. Of course, we are interested very much in how
people dress, and all other aspects of their appearance, but this is downplayed at Wilson such
that it is almost actively shunned. Hence, students wear clothing in tatters and don’t comb
their hair. This is partially on account of the attempt to deemphasize their rich white kid
identity, but also no doubt gets at an underlying value that seeks to undermine mainstream
consumption habits and the emphasis on appearance. As an identifier, clothing does not
hold what one might consider traditional meaning but instead incorporates a more
postmodern standard of judgment.
One of the main critiques of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital is that he focused
on upward mobility and he based his research on an imagined societal “ladder.” Even if this
system did make sense in his own research, today’s world requires a more multi-dimensional
model of cultural capital. He based his two participant groups on different levels of
educational background—mainly separated by their economic status. Although as I will
argue, food constitutes an arena in which one’s economic status seems to be of great
importance, other arenas, such as clothing, seems not to be quite as closely linked to
economic status. At Warren Wilson, as with other communities of the same generation,
clothing has become so multi-faceted that there is no more surety as to what defines “good”
or “bad” taste. No longer can nice clothes be what upper class people wear, and plain
clothes be what poor people wear. I will discuss three main reasons for this effect at Wilson.
The first is that for the postmodern generation, breadth is emphasized over height. Second,
irony is present in almost all aspects of college culture. Lastly, a common rich white kid
mentality urges students to emphasize downward mobility through dress.
Wilson students have a very active and wide range of popular anthropology knowledge and use it
in daily interaction. It certainly came up during the interviews.
12
Miller 27
Breadth Over Height. In looking at today’s dress practices, it helps to reiterate the
development of the theory of cultural capital made by Peterson and Kern, who argue that
“higher social status is…associated with broad tastes which display awareness of a range of
cultural products” (1996:387). Thus the original idea of cultural capital consisting of
specialized knowledge about “highbrow” topics opens up to a broader definition
incorporating all types of cultural products and more than one standard for “classifying the
classifier” (Bourdieu 1984:6). With clothing this is particularly relevant, as each piece of
clothing has many possible associations, and the wearer can thus align themselves with many
ideas through the act of dress.
An example of this is that only people from today’s generation would know the
difference between Tevas and Chacos (and this is probably also class-specific, too). Tevas
are waterproof sandals that I imagine were designed for outdoors use, sometime in the late
1990s. When they first became popular, almost everyone had a pair. Today, the same type
of sandal is made but called a different name: Chacos. Chacos are almost the exact same
shoe (with the exception of such stylitic changes as thinner straps). Today, many people
have Chacos, and Tevas are much more rare, as they are the older version, not “up to date.”
Therefore, when a student sees someone with Tevas on, they can read into it not only that
they are wearing Tevas, but also that they are not wearing Chacos—they see the history and
the background behind the material possession, and thus give it more meaning. The point is
not that Chacos are for higher-classed people, but that Chacos are newer than Tevas and
thus for a certain group (maybe white middle class people with a vague interest in the
outdoors) are more valuable than Tevas. In this type of situation, it is not the height of your
taste in clothes (the amount of money you can afford to invest in them) but the breadth (the
different backgrounds and styles you are aware of, and you can use to your benefit).
Another sign that breadth is valued over height is that people often mix many
different styles together—creating outfits that are one day “hip-hop bling” and the next,
“L.L. Bean classy.” Also, a classic college tradition, the theme party, seems to suggest that
this phenomena is much larger than Warren Wilson College and much more historic than
only the 2000s.
Miller 28
Irony. Other authors have attested to the irony found in college culture (Nathan 2005;
Moffat 1989) and this is definitely apparent at Wilson. Perhaps stemming from the liminality
that the students are immersed in, it seems to be very popular to display “anti-popular”
tastes. That is, when students encounter something typically grotesque or unlikeable, (such
as a plastic figurine of an eagle above an American flag, made to mimic Native American art)
they say “Oh my God I love it.” It is known by both the speaker and the audience that this
type of “love” is much different than the type of love inferred onto, for instance, the land of
Warren Wilson College—one is “serious,” the other, not.
One example of the affect of irony takes us back to Savannah’s experience. As
freshmen, I remember that the girls in my dorm (myself included) thought it was “tacky”
when Savannah put up plastic Easter decorations on her window. They were the kind that is
a clingy type of plastic that you stick to the window, like removable decorations that a gas
station or drugstore might use. Savannah thought they were cute; her grandmother had sent
them to her in an Easter-themed care package. We all felt embarrassed for her, as if this was
a completely tasteless act. Juxtapose this memory with what I observed this last Easter:
James, a popular guy, in his junior year, gay, with a taste for crazy, somewhat flamboyant
things, puts up the same type of decorations on his window. Yet this time, it is not
considered tacky by any means. Instead it is creative and funny. James would say he “loves
it”—he is aware of the objects’ association, aware that they are “tacky.” But with a little help
from the common themes of irony and sarcasm, he makes it into his own personal
statement. One must have some kind of background knowledge of tackyness in order to
understand when someone is being serious or not. In fact, however, it may be the reverse:
perhaps background knowledge of the person is required to know whether or not they are
using irony. Knowing what kind of family Savannah came from would clue one into the fact
that she was being serious; knowing that James was so popular and flamboyant would clue
one into the fact that he was not “being serious.”13 It is easy to imagine how clothes would
be hard to judge in a social sphere where clothes can be “serious” or not. Thus this
tendency towards irony makes clothing an even more difficult means of identifying peoples’
values.
“Being serious” is actually a very common emic term used to describe whether or not someone is
using irony.
13
Miller 29
Rich White Kids’ Emphasis on Downward Mobility. One more thing that makes dress
so complicated an issue at Wilson is something that I call the rich white kid mentality. I am
referring to the tendency of students to think of their community as one of wealthy, white
young adults who are basically spoiled brats that cannot sympathize with lower-income
people due to their status of privilege. In all of my formal interviewees, students referred to
the Wilson student community as stereotypically rich white kids, or something to that effect
(such as “trustafarians”). (They also all thought of themselves as some type of an exception
to the rule.) This “rich white kid mentality” leads people to emphasize downward mobility
by the way they dress (perhaps more so than by any other way). One way of creating
authenticity is by bringing your clothing consumption into contact with other classes of
people. That must be the reason that the two most popular sources for clothes for many
Wilson students is the free store and Goodwill, both places to buy or simply find used
clothing. Karen Tranberg Hansen states that the “retro style” of second-hand clothing (in
the West, where it is not an important source of clothing but rather a niche market)
“attributes history and authenticity to garments that wearers experience as unique and
personal” (2004:385). I believe that her statement best applies to the larger interest in
“vintage” clothing. At Wilson, however, the more important part of used clothing is that
they don’t cost as much, allowing the wearer/buyer to live out a lifestyle resembling that of a
person of lower demographic status.
Hansen also found that breath was more important than height in todays’
dress practices. The following quote sums up the related reasons for why clothing at Wilson
is such a multifaceted arena:
Combining secondhand garments into styles that display knowledge of wider
clothing practice or subvert their received meanings, traders and consumers effect a
creolization of this imported commodity to serve their personal and community
identities (2004:385).
Furthermore, Hansen shows that by looking at modern dress practices, one can see
the weaknesses in Bourdieu’s theory shine through. Hansen bemoans
…the lingering effects of trickle-down theories that have restrained our
understanding of the sources and currents of dress inspirations. Bourdieu’s classbased explanatory model of differentiation may be criticized in this vein for
accentuating distinctions between mass and high culture. Polhemus (1994)
acknowledges influences on style adoption from the bottom up. Dress influences
travel in all directions, across class lines, between urban and rural areas, and around
the globe (372).
Miller 30
Thus, clothing is a very multifaceted subject and cannot easily be read. Even though clothes
are definitely an important way to describe and identify people, they are much farther
removed from their source than is food (at least that’s how it is imagined). Other arenas,
such as music and substance preference, are similarly complex in that they do not constitute
an upwardly mobile system of tastes—with “high music” at the top and “low music” at the
bottom, for instance. (Music, like clothes, is based upon diversity of tastes.14) However, as we
will see, food does not have quite as complex an ideological separation from its source; it
constitutes a much more simple dichotomy between good and bad.
Clothing Choice in the Coming of Age Ritual. One common story is that
students first come in wearing hippie clothes in order to express their identity, but eventually
learn that nice clothes may be okay, especially when you get them for free. During this
year’s freshman orientation, a popular upperclassman who was giving a talk about recycling
told the entire incoming freshman class to get rid of all their nice clothes so that she could
take them from the free store. This kind of learning experience comes across in some of
the narrative I heard. In the following excerpt, Hannah discusses what she called her “two
divisions” of different types of Wilson students. She then describes how she has come to
see that judging people by their clothes is folly.
Hannah: [the first division of people is] the people who go to concerts and stay in
touch with the music scene, “oh my gosh listen to this album, I know every song,”
“oh I just got this great new crystal.” And then there are these people who I think
of as the hard core people who live in the woods and wear one outfit from the
freestore, and ride their bikes and dig in the dirt, very much from-the-ground-esque
people. And they get dirt on them from a project, instead of just like, “oh, I’m a
dirty hippie.” And when I came here, I didn’t know, I thought that people who
dressed nicely didn’t have those values, cause they didn’t look like it, but they
actually were the hard-core type.
Wyn: Could you give examples of hardcore and not hardcore types?
Hannah: A girl named ------- who wore really nice clothes, but it turned out that
they were from the free store and she is actually vehemently opposed to
consumption. She doesn’t care about wearing Birkenstocks. And then her
roommate is an example of the non-hardcore type…Like ------- would be in the
I found that a very popular occurrence in music tastes is that girls like “horrible 80s music” while
guys often like jazz or reggae (not to even mention the much more common taste for hip-hop). This
seems to create a connection between each gender-based group with an opposed group. The implicit
understanding is that popular, studious, “boring” rich white girls are aligned with sexy, crazy teenybopper party girls of the 1980s; rich white young males are aligned with their antithesis, the cool cats
of earlier generations who were black, poor, and soulful.
14
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hardcore group, but maybe in the middle because she does look like a stereotypical
student, but then she also wears the same thing every day, she lives in the wood, she
really doesn’t mind getting dirty…I think she’s in essence trying to live on the Earth
lightly, and when we talk about environmental sustainability, I think that’s what it
comes down to, and so then it’s just a matter of okay so how can you do that best?
And I think her, and the other people I place in this more intense column, are, are
people that are really trying to put that into practice, so they can look at like all
different types, of people, but in the end, down below, they’re going to be making
their decisions based on that idea, whereas some of the other people it’s like a, it’s
like a game, almost. And it’s like, um, okay, well, and it’s very much more about
image, and so now, like I’m really drawn towards people who don’t fit that image,
and sometimes I run across someone who is like, a stereotypical Wilson student in
my eyes, when I see them, that then doesn’t turn out to be, but I’m more attracted,
right now, to those people who you know, don’t look it at all, you know, cause I
wanna find out, like, what even drew them to school, to this place, and do they feel
like they fit the mold, or all of that? And so I think that’s really interesting, um, and
maybe underneath, everyone’s a—everyone’s hardcore, I don’t know, maybe it’s just
a matter of getting to know them.
Wyn: So are there any ways you’ve changed in your time at Wilson?
Hannah: Particularly I mean for example, my hair. [She had had dredlocks.] Umm, I
realized that, “Wow,” I’ve created this, this idea that I wanted to, I wanted to fit the
mold, really in the beginning, and so, in the greater mold in society of this
subculture that, umm that is defying the world and, and it was also a fantasy, like my
impression of Warren Wilson, and so, um, so then when I realized that, is that many
of the people who I was looking to for guidance and looking to as, as people that I
was really impressed with, weren’t fitting that mold at all, and so I was like “well,
gosh I wonder what would happen, what would I ideally like to feel like?” And that
just entire idea started me on like, this transformation, like “oh my gosh, I don’t like
having messy hair, actually, like Wow, this has been bothering me for so long but
because I thought I had to fit the mold, I’ve kept them”, and so then it was like
“Chop chop chop chop—Wow!” you know? Or like, “oh wow, I really like to wear
skirts, and, but I don’t like flowers,” or, or your, I mean just on and on, or like “I
don’t like bright colors, and I hate tie-dye!” And so, so I’m not gonna wear it! You
know, whereas before, I had been like very much like, “well this is typical, this is
what you do if you want to be recognized by a member of your same, same
orientation.” And then I realized that I didn’t want to be recognized at all, that it
would be much important—more beneficial for me just to run across people of
many different ideas and get outside that like “oh my gosh, this is what you have to
look at, and I’m gonna judge people based on their appearance,” you know, so it
sort of like jolted me out, and it took coming here, um in many ways, I’m not sure if
I would realize it if I hadn’t come here and been all the sudden exposed to a place
where not only where I was seeing similar people, um, but where then I could
challenge it.
Illustrating her learning curve regarding appearances, Hannah’s narrative is very
similar to many others I have heard. Ashley summed up the general idea when I asked her
to describe the general appearance of Wilsoners: “There’s this joke, like, you can tell who’s
graduating because they cut their dreds off. I mean, we do ultimately live in a bubble.”
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Food: There’s Nothing Funny About It
You might be wondering why, if my main emphasis is on food, I would have
gone into such detail describing the characteristics of clothes. What is important to note is
that for the majority of my research I was interested not in food but other arenas such as
clothes, smoking preference, and music. These seem to be the most creative arenas in which
people display their identity. As I accumulated data on clothes and other preferences,
however, I found that although all these other preferences seemed to work the same way—a
postmodern complexity of symbols—food did not at all resemble this version of aesthetics.
Rather, food seemed to be much more simple.15 A clue from the start is that food, unlike
clothes, is often actually described by the gloss-over terms “good” and “bad.” This was one
of my main clues as to the unique importance of food. Another clue was the fact that
pressure seems to surround food choices in a way that it does not surround other
preferences.
Foodism: An Everyday Aesthetic
My beginning approach to food was as an everyday aesthetic. “Everyday aesthetics”
is a term that John Forrest used in his book Lord, I’m Coming Home: Everyday Aesthetics in
Tidewater, North Carolina (1988) to refer to all the judgments and tastes surrounding sensual
experiences. In this work, Forrest shows the impact of aesthetic preferences on the daily
lives of the society that promotes them. Basically, Forrest shows that the maintenance and
use of such aesthetic preferences is not directly dependent on socioeconomic status—
although it may, of course, interact with that type of status.
In his case, Forrest finds that the most important use of cultural capital, for residents
of Tidewater, is to reiterate and display one’s identity within a social situation based on a
binary opposition between old and new residents of the area. Old residents, he finds,
subscribe to a form of interaction that he calls “aesthetic-incorporative,” while new residents
To be honest, although I entitled this section “Food: There’s Nothing Funny About It,” I have
actually caused someone to laugh by my food preference. A few weeks ago while working in the
printmaking studio with my friend, he saw the snacks I’d brought—Pringles and beef jerky—and
said, laughing, “I love how you’ve got, like, the most non-Warren Wilson food!” (So as to not lose
my esteemed reputation, I would like to mention that I would never really choose this type of food! I
definitely only had Pringles because by this point in my research, I was testing out my hypothesis!)
15
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subscribe to what he calls a “material-transactional” interaction. These two forms of
interaction are representative of differing life patterns, worldviews, and relationships to the
wider world. By using one or the other type of interaction, you are aligning yourself with
one or the other set of values. Thus the real aesthetic is in judging how one relates to other
people. With this brief of an introduction, Forrest’s names for the two types of interaction
are confusing. Suffice it to say that those who place more emphasis on aesthetic judgment
are using the aesthetic-incorporative mode.
In this microcosm, then, the most “everyday” objects can take on political meaning
and social alignment. Indeed, not only objects but even smells, sounds, actions and verbal
signs—all aspects of sensual experience—are possible territory for aesthetic judgment. Thus
Forrest goes into detail describing, for instance, the difference in a chicken supper versus a
Brunswick stew supper (1988:224). Each type of food has a fundamentally different
meaning for the participants, made clear by the sights, smells and tastes experienced during
the meal.
A very similar kind of attention to detail takes place on the Wilson campus. Just as
Rebekah Nathan found on her college campus, material belongings make up the majority of
everyday aesthetic material.
Despite our celebrated freedom to choose, we seem to choose the same things, and
these “free” choices are the badges of our belonging. So it is with student life, in
everything from the kind of backpack or the choice of shoes one wears to the kinds
of images and words one displays on one’s door and the topics one initiates for
conversation in the dorm (Nathan:143).
This same attention to detail pervades socializing at Wilson. I once witnessed a student
complimenting another on their lunch tray: the latter student had brought a kid-sized bright
pink lunch tray from the free store and was using it in the lunchroom, alongside all the other
bland-colored trays. Usually most students don’t even use trays. But for some reason this
thing provoked interest. Why? We can never know. The secret logic that designates some
things as “cool” and others as “lame” is a mystery to us all. But we must know somehow in
our unconscious, as nearly everyone is capable and most very skilled at knowing what is or
isn’t cool. Other examples of attention to minute detail that I have found at Warren Wilson
are the attention given to the following types of possession: pens, water bottles, notebooks,
belts, wallets, bedding materials or linens, key chains, etc. Really anything and nearly
everything can come under inspection. Some more substantial preferences are music, cars,
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hairstyle and choice of alcoholic beverage. These preferences are more closely or clearly
linked to a person’s political views or value set and therefore not often criticized openly.
The other, more minute aesthetic preferences above are less easily linked to a person’s values
and thus are more open to criticism.
Examples of this abound: a friend of mine was once teased for several minutes about
her “erect” backpack because it looked “weird” (it was just kind of big and stiff and poofy)
but later when she was drawn into admitting that her step-father drove a Hummer, no one
teased her at all. Teasing someone about such a clearly meaningful characteristic such as car
choice is much more serious than teasing them about their backpack’s dimensions. But both
these details to their material choices are made of the same implicit logic. Certainly there is
an explicit logic as to why a Hummer is lame—it is the antithesis of environmental
friendliness. But I would argue that such explicit logic is not what students use to determine
the coolness of a Hummer. One fact that supports this claim is that the Prius is also not
considered a cool car by many, even though it is very much aligned with environmentalism.
The logic making these cars less than cool is the same logic that makes my friend’s puffy
backpack less than cool.
This type of knowledge is superficial and temporary: it has no deep wisdom nor does
it have lasting value. It does, however, have useful temporary applicability. Especially in the
scene at Wilson—a state of liminality wherein an individual is stripped of their past
identity—this type of implicit knowledge is an important, if not crucial, part of creating one’s
identity. I will refer to this type of knowledge as everyday aesthetics. This is essentially the
same notion of everyday aesthetics that Forrest used, but unlike Forrest I would like to
maintain that this version of aesthetics is still compliant with Bourdieu’s theory of cultural
capital (excepting the tie to socioeconomic status). That is, in the situation at Wilson, the
ability to implicitly know and openly display everyday aesthetics does function to exclude or
include people from social networks. I would emphasize what Bourdieu called “social
capital” rather than economic capital as being more closely tied to cultural capital. Thus
one’s ability to distinguish lame from cool is a huge factor in determining who will be friends
with who.
In the following drawing, Mandi depicts her idea of good and bad food.
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Figure III.A
On one side, Sunny Delight and hot dogs are listed as bad foods. On the other, good wine
and fresh foods are listed as good foods. Obviously, one of these sides is more affordable
than the other. Even though Mandi would seek to distance herself from the rich white kid
stereotype, her tastes show that she is wealthy enough to afford artisan and healthy foods.
Upon drawing this, Mandi was incredibly excited to depict her taste in food, spiritedly
exclaiming “I hate frozen peas!” and other such statements. She is not alone in her energetic
reactions to foods. A co-worker of mine inevitably shouts “gross!” or “disgusting!”
whenever a fast food joint is mentioned. Emotional outbursts are certainly not uncommon
reactions to certain food stimuli.
More than anything, this points to a personal investment in food choice. Food is a
huge part of how people define themselves. Needless to say, food is not the only way people
illustrate their identity. Clothing and other such material possessions certainly do contribute
to displays of identity. Yet, no arena is so vehemently contested as food. (No one would
seriously yell “gross!” no matter what clothes they saw someone wearing.) I have found that
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food is the single most actively patrolled arena in which the student culture puts pressure on
every individual.
Why food? My research suggests that food, for Wilson students, represents our
connection to the earth as well as our commitment to environmentalism and our
relationship with the idealized entity of global capitalism (and more specifically the agroindustrial complex). Put in lay terms, the food we eat symbolizes our relationship to “the
man.”
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Countercuisine: Food as a Political Statement
As Bourdieu stated, tastes “classify the classifier.” Food aesthetics categorize people
into different perceived value groups. Each has political connotations. The aesthetic
perspective is therefore related to the next perspective, which is that of food as a political
statement. First I will look at an attempt to understand aesthetics of fine art as a political
statement, and then I will return to the subject of food.
In Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home, David Halle takes a new approach
toward fine art aesthetics that critiques Bourdieu’s emphasis on cultural capital. Halle claims
that Bourdieu’s original data set out in Distinction does not really show that culture is a
prerequisite for power. The correlation he based his theory on—that between educational
background and taste in art—is a small one; it does not necessarily prove his point.16 Halle
finds that there are many wealthy and powerful individuals who do not display high brow
tastes.
Instead, Halle, in an approach similar to Forrest’s, looks at the aesthestic preferences
of his participants as being meaningful ways of negotiating relationships to outside entities
(peers, demographic populations, etc.) and political ideologies. Halle investigated the
presence of African and African American art in Manhattan homes. What he found was that
primitive African artwork (masks, wood carvings, etc.) found in democrat’s houses were seen
by the owners as respectful displays of different cultures’ art, enjoyed for its artistic quality.
However, in republican’s houses, primitive African art was seen as a precursor of western
art, in a kind of Darwinian scheme (1993:153-4). Thus, Halle concluded that in consumers’
minds, primitive African artwork was closely linked to conceptions of black people in
modern society, but for different ideologies it could symbolize different attitudes. His
evidence was so conclusive that he stated tribal art in Manhattan households functions as a
“limus test of political attitudes towards minorities” (169).
Halle also found that black people had primitive art, but they had it alongside other,
modern images of black people (posters of civil rights activists, etc.) (1993:158). White
people, on the other hand, had no such images. So when art (a symbol of black people) as
Although Halle’s critique is valid (and has been made by many others) I would argue that there is
more truth to Bourdieu’s theory than could be encapsulated by his research, as his quantitative
methods were not the best choice for investigating cultural capital. Halle’s inquiry seems more suited
to a quantitative method because he correlates taste with other cultural factors (political views,
conceptions of Africaness) rather than simply income or educational background.
16
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consumed by these Manhattan residents is juxtaposed with the actual lived interaction they
have with black people, it becomes apparent that the way they display art expresses their
relationship with this minority. The tribal images that whites displayed depicted the form of
blackness that was farthest from them, a kind of ancestral blackness that is not the same
blackness they might encounter in their everyday lives. Halle states, “The racial separation
that pervades modern American life, especially in the residential sphere, is thus reflected in
this decision to display “tribal” persons but not African Americans” (158). Art, for Halle, is
an arena in which peoples’ tastes can play out their imagined rather than lived experience
with external entities.
One thing that we can take from Halle’s study and apply to other types of aesthetics,
it is that the aesthetic object in question is important due to its ability to function as a vessel
for taste rather than its actual content. Halle found that middle-class people (as opposed to
upper-class) did not display primitive art because they thought it looked scary or ugly.17
Therefore, he states, “the attraction of masks appears to be in their unaesthetic rather than
aesthetic qualities. This underlines the need to seek out the symbolic meaning that the
objects possess” (150). This symbolic meaning could be found in a variety of objects, not
just fine art. In fact, primitive art only had the meaning it had because it was juxtaposed
with the conception of traditional fine art; for people who aren’t interested in fine art, it
wouldn’t have that meaning. This leads us to see that aesthetics, as Forrest insisted, should
be moved from the specific category of art and allowed to encompass all possible aspects of
sensual experience. This will allow anthropologists to investigate the aesthetic preferences
towards any object as meaningful behavior.
Like Forrest, Iurii Gerchuk also investigated the meaning of everyday aesthetics,
focusing on the style of modernity as practiced in the USSR during the Khruschchev thaw.
Gerchuk saw that the changing political atmosphere (after the fall of Stalin and the Soviet
Union) impacted the national aesthetic preference. He found that a utilitarian style was
created, called “contemporary”: “beauty was to be inseparable from utility, and must be
rational and universally accessible” (2000:90). This new system of aesthetics was
intentionally invented and propelled by political (communist) motives. Hence, aesthetics is a
real part of peoples’ lives, which can be manipulated, superimposed, shared, borrowed,
Which is, interestingly, the same way they were often viewed in their traditional context of African
religious rituals.
17
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overturned, promoted, etc. In this view, aesthetics is an evaluatory system capable of being
manipulated by different groups, for different purposes, and at different times.
Surprisingly, Gerchuk’s study, although in a completely different setting, found
people using aesthetics in a way very similar to how they do at Wilson. Gerchuk was
investigating “the consumption of material objects to project personal and collective
identities, and even to articulate resistance to the state” (2000:4). Gerchuk looked at a
generalized aesthetic that applied to all material elements. But this same statement can apply
to specific arenas, and I have found that it applies to food very successfully. Now I will
return to the subject of food and see how it has been used in the past to represent political
statements.
History of the Health Food Movement. Our consumption practices say more about us
than simply whether or not we are interested in keeping our bodies healthy. Even though
their foodism may have grown out of the health food movement, the issue of health is on
the sidelines for most Wilson foodists. Warren Belasco, who studied the health food
movement in the 1960s, referred to the use of food as a symbolic act of political rebellion as
“countercuisine.” Belasco insists that rather than just being a food fad, “the countercuisine
represented a serious and largely unprecedented attempt to reverse the direction of dietary
modernization and thereby align personal consumption with perceived global needs”
(2005:217). Food was, according to Belasco, an “edible dynamic—a visceral, lived daily link
between the personal and the political” (217).
Food is certainly no less to students at Warren Wilson College. During my
observation, when I was still trying to figure out what aspects I wanted to study, I remember
being in a friend’s room, and looking at posters on the wall. They were woodblock prints
that said things like “wake up,” “resist,” and “subsist” above drawings of vegetables and a
person working in the dirt. That was when I realized that food would be the main topic of
my paper. It is important to note that the political undertones in these drawings were
represented by these agrarian-themed images. Food has become, for many students
(especially those on the farm, garden and other such crews) a symbol for a dreamed political
and social revolution. “Sustainability,” the catchphrase of this generation’s optimists, is
thought to be found in food, in localizing and simplifying our consumptive processes. It is
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this same friend18 (who had the posters) who once said at the dinner table that food was
“evil”—referring to the whole agricultural system, of course. In fact, the entire
environmental attitude can be made to rest upon one’s food choices.
If there was a theme emerging from much of this countercultural experimentation
with bread and other foods, it was the one of responsibility: by eating “organically”
raised foods…consumers showed they understood that their eating behavior had
roots and consequences—implications not only for their own health but also for the
state of the economy, environment, and, ultimately, the planet (Belasco 2005, 223).
It was much harder for me to surface peoples’ ideas about how and why food had political
meaning because those who were well-versed in it took it for granted, and they wouldn’t
mention it in the interviews. Drawings became a very good representation of the taken-forgranted political undertones of food choice.
In the following drawing, Sally depicts her idea of good and bad food.
Figure III.B
Although I frequently refer to my informants as “friends,” it must be noted that I do not actually
have very close relationships with these people, and they certainly do not constitute my “circle of
friends.” In such a small community, I know many people who I consider friends; it is a large
enough group to be somewhat representative of the student body as a whole. Many of my friends
are very adamant foodists; others are not. A few of my friends are markedly non-foodist.
18
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Several reference points in this drawing point to key aspects of sociopolitical orientation.
First, one must note the origin of the chickens. Bad chickens come in a truck; good
chickens come from an idyllic pastoral setting with signs of nature therein. Secondly, the
process by which the chicken is turned into food is important. Bad chicken has been
processed with a meat grinder, while good chicken has been processed with a hand axe. The
meat grinder is aligned with technology while the axe speaks of personal connections to
one’s food and its origin. Meat grinders are large and efficient while axes are small and slowpaced. Lastly, the packaging of the eggs is key to understanding Sally’s impression of
consumption patterns. One type of consumption is where you eat eggs out of an egg
carton—that consumption takes place in a supermarket, where you buy eggs that have been
shipped from far away. You are in an impersonal relationship with the farmer of the eggs.
On the good chicken side, however, Sally has shown that eggs in a basket mean good eggs.
In order to get your eggs in a basket, you must be near the eggs’ origin. Therefore, you have
probably experienced some level of connection with the farmer. Again, as with the axe,
there is a place for your hand, where the consumer is allowed to participate in the processes
involved in their own consumption practices.
Sally has incorporated several huge sociopolitical statements into a drawing that
“merely” depicts different types of chicken. The difference in the origin of the chickens
(truck versus range-fed) highlights disdain for a gas-guzzling economy that is based on global
rather than local economies. The difference in technologies involved in food processing (the
meat grinder versus the hand axe) point to admiration of personalized rather than
mechanized labor, as well as a general dislike of technology. The last bit—the difference in
egg packaging—can be said to stand for the difference between a do-it-yourself mentality
and person-to-person relationships versus the dehumanizing effect of the supermarket.
Notably, the “bad chicken” drawing describes the current status quo for the vast majority of
today’s chicken (and other animal protein) production. Creating the “good chicken” system
is sometimes seen as a step forward (towards the sustainability of the future) or a step back
(to the homesteaders of the past). Either way, it is an entirely different system than is
currently in place and would require huge changes in political and economic policies to
implement.
Interestingly, while vegetarians seem to be interested in organic food, meat-eating
foodists (especially those on the garden and farm crews) seem to emphasize local over
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organic ingredients. This may have something to do with the fact that organic food is
usually more expensive and therefore considered more elitist. But no doubt it also stems
from the fact that while organic and artisan foods can be incorporated into mass food
production and the global economy, local food is actually impossible to advocate without
also implying changes to the entire global agro-industry. Omivores, in order to emphasize
their belief that local is more important than organic or low-impact (as vegetarianism is)
seem to have taken meat-eating and made of it a statement. As Steve, a farm crew member,
insists, meat eating is more sustainable than organic or vegetarian diets, if it is local.
Wyn: How do you feel about vegetarianism?
Steve: I don’t mind vegetarians, but I don’t like militant vegans. If you think you’re
saving the world by buying tomatoes from California, that’s bullshit.
Steve’s drawing further illustrates this sentiment. For him, as for many Wilson meat-eating
foodists, health is a side issue.19 As he states, food choice is “all about the origin.”
Figure III.C
I have found that health plays more of a role in food choice for vegetarians and vegans.
Omnivorous foodists tend to emphasize the fact that they feel comfortable eating a lot of butter,
bacon grease, and other typically unhealthy foods as long as they are natural, organic, or local.
19
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Steve, like Sally, shows the status quo in food production as bad “far-away crap.” He
emphasizes freshness and wholesome foods, but does not shun calorie-filled beer or
cholesterol-filled beef. Omnivorous foodists are also much more likely to use the word
“fatty” to refer to good food. Although originally just applied to cuts of meat, “fatty” has
come to describe other types of food as well, such as burritos or other “hearty” foods.
Food as a Key Symbol
Sherry Ortner described in detail the different possible functions of key symbols
(1973). An example of a very well-known key symbol is cattle as emphasized in Dinka
culture (Lienhart 1961). Ortner divided key symbols into what she called elaborating and
summarizing symbols (although these terms can actually refer to the function of a symbol
rather than simply a trait).
Summarizing Symbols. A summarizing symbol is something that sums up core values and
displays them for all to see. According to Ortner,
Summarizing symbols…are those symbols which are seen as summing up,
expressing, representing for the participants in an emotionally powerful and
relatively undifferentiated way, what the system means to them. This category is
essentially the category of sacred symbols in the broadest sense, and includes all
those items which are objects of reverence and/or catalysts of emotion—the flag,
the cross, the churinga, the forked stick, the motorcycle, etc. The American flag, for
example, stands for something called “the American way,” a conglomerate of ideas
and feelings…It does not encourage reflection on the logical relations among those
ideas, nor on the logical consequences of them as they are played out in social
actuality, over time and history. On the contrary, the flag encourages a sort of allor-nothing allegiance to the whole package…Summarizing symbols…operate to
compound and synthesize a complex system of ideas, to “summarize” them under a
uniting form (1339-40).
Food can be seen as a summarizing symbol because it encapsulates the values of the student
(and larger) community. Certain food rituals—most notably bread-breaking and potlucks—
are often referenced as if they are the apex of Warren Wilson College values. When I asked
Amber to draw herself doing her favorite thing, in her favorite place, she drew herself baking
bread, with her friends.
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Figure III.D
Breaking bread among friends is seen as a timeless tradition that incorporates wholesome
values and personal relationships into an act of consumption. Community and personal
connections are emphasized by the sharing of a piece of food, sustainability and health by
the environmentally sound qualities of the bread itself. Enjoying the bread in a slow,
intentional manner shows appreciation for “the good things in life.” A potluck can serve a
similar purpose: the meal itself, and all communal processes involved, symbolize everything
good about life.
On the other hand, food can also summarize all the negative aspects of our culture.
One example of this would be the way students look at a picture in Adbuster’s magazine of
an obese six-year-old eating a hamburger in MacDonald’s and say, “No wonder everything is
so fucked up.” To them, everything that is wrong in our culture can be encapsulated by this
picture of an already-unhealthy child being forced to further harm himself and the
environment by participating in the corporate food industries.
Elaborating Symbols. Ortner describes another type of symbol, an elaborating symbol, as
one that provides a vehicle for “sorting out complex and undifferentiated feelings and ideas,
making them comprehensible to oneself, communicable to others, and translatable into
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orderly action” (1973:1340). While a summarizing symbol pulls ideas together, an
elaborating symbol picks them apart and renegotiates their relationship. Food can do this in
a variety of ways. As I have mentioned before, food is an arena in which one can negotiate
his or her relationship with the institution, the idealized “mainstream,” and with other
individuals. By buying into the Wilson idea of good food, one can show that they approve
of the institution’s values. Alternately, by not buying into foodism, people reject Wilson
values and align themselves with the outside world. Gillian, an eighteen-year-old freshman,
drew an archetypical student as one who loves “yummy food.”
Figure III.E
You can see plainly that part of being a Wilson student, for Gillian, is eating “Wilson beef.”
Rather than just labeling this a hamburger, Gillian (and all other students) refer to these
burgers as “Wilson burgers.” By showing a love for the meat produced on the farm, one can
reaffirm their devotion to their community and the institution.
However, once again, food can serve to undermine core values while acting as an
elaborating symbol. If we look at Amy’s narrative about why she and her friends like to go
to town, we can see that she uses food as a way to express her overall opinion of the College
as elitist and hypocritical (which she expressed to me throughout the interview).
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Wyn: Your friend that you hang out with off-campus, why does he like to leave, to
go into town?
Amy: Um, I think he just sort of starts to feel antsy, being in this one environment
all the time. Um, maybe…sort of a dose of other elements of reality, you know,
like, sometimes it’s—‘cause I mean I, I shop and get mainly organic food, you
know, like I don’t go to Walmart, I try to be very healthy and, and eco-friendly, and
like sometimes it’s sort of nice to relax and be like, “I can go to, like, the Carmike
movie theater”—not the brew and view, or the fine arts theater—“and I can get
like, like a box of mini-butterfingers and some popcorn,” and like, and like, not
worry about it. You know, like it’s sort of nice to just be able to like “Ahh” you
know, just totally like—
Wyn:—like just be normal—
Amy:—yeah, and I think it’s great to like, to strive for your ideals. But, I also think
it is good to humanize yourself and realize like, “I’m not going to save the world,
and I can do my part, but like, I—I’m not a martyr for this ‘cause, and I can like,
from time to time just sort of relax about it.”
Here, Amy shows that humanizing oneself, in her mind, is recognizing your boundaries and
limitations and allowing yourself to partake of normal food. Other examples of this food
rebellion (a counter-countercuisine, if you will) occur, especially with students who feel
shunned by the institution for some reason or another, and wish (more than others) to align
themselves with working class people. The idealistic freshmen who want to “save the
world,” in her mind, are the ones who can afford (and who care) to eat good food all the
time. Amy is a particularly interesting case because she does approve of the institution’s
values as a whole—she considers herself an environmentalist, etc.—but disapproves of the
way that students are encouraged to be idealists. (This may be due to the fact that she is a
mature and perhaps “jaded” student.)
Food as Religion
A last approach to food that I want to discuss is food as a religion. In anthropology,
reoccurring characteristics define a religion more so than theology. Elements that may help
define a religion are a temple, a sacred text, a keeper of knowledge, or a sacred ritual. Jill
Dubisch wrote about the health food movement, and stated that investigating the movement
“requires looking at health foods as a system of symbols and the adherence to a
health food way of life as being, in part, the expression of belief in a particular world
view. Analysis of these symbols and the underlying wolrld view reveals that, as a
system of beliefs and practices, the health food movement has some of the
characteristics of a religion” (2004:311).
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The Wilson student community has several religious aspects, most notably the idea of a
golden age, a distinction between mana versus taboo, and seemingly sacred potlucks. Each
of these aspects expresses deeply embedded cultural values and naturalizes certain thoughts
or actions according to those values.
The Golden Age of Foodists. A golden age, according to Dubisch, is a concept of the
past, “which provides an authourity for a better way of living” (2004:314). Diets that invoke
the past, such as today’s “Paleo diet” or Dubisch’s reference to the “Caveman diet” point to
“a general nostalgia about the past” and “the feeling that we have departed from a more
natural pattern of eating practiced by earlier generations” (314). Wilson students have a
similar concept of the past, something that I have labeled “neopeasantism.” Neopeasants
believe that in the past, we led healthier, more natural lives, and the current society has fallen
from this past “Eden.” Belasco finds that the modern “vogue” of artisan foods (bread and
cheese, for instance) points to this longing for a mythical traditional world of the past
(2005:222). Wilson students also appreciate this type of food: “good” food that has been
“hand-crafted,” aligned with craftsmanship rather than technology. Homemade food is
always considered better than food bought in a store, even if it does not taste as good.
Neopeasants would rather eat green leaves they had picked with their hands (animalistic
behavior) than packaged foods bought with money (capitalist behavior). Furthermore,
neopeasants appreciate food that is aligned with nature over food that is aligned with culture.
Thus wild-growing plants are better than processed sugar-based treats. Mushrooms found in
the wild are some of the most choice foods. Other attempts to separate themselves from
the capitalist, monetary system have resulted in freegans—people who eat things they find
for free (bagels in dumpsters, roadkill, etc.) so that they do not have to eat food that has
been received in return for money.
Foodists’ Mana versus Taboo. Another religious aspect of the health food movement is
the concept of mana versus taboo. Dubisch states that mana is “a type of beneficial or
valuable power which can pass to individuals from sacred objects through touch [or
ingestion]” (2004:313). Mana is aligned with all of the good parts of culture—love, life, light,
health, etc. Taboo is just the opposite. Taboo “refers to power that is dangerous; objects
that are taboo can injure those who touch them” (313). Taboo objects are aligned with the
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negative aspects of culture—death, dark, ill health, evil, etc. Terms that point to the
difference between these two categories are the “wholesomeness,” “life-giving” power and
“health” of good foods and the “poison” and “chemicals” found in bad food. Table 2
illustrates the difference in these terms.
Good
Local, organic, homegrown/homemade, no
preservatives or additives
sustainable
natural
YUMMY
Delicious, wonderful, love, tasty, wholesome,
life-giving, sustaining, health
Table 2.
Bad
Global, industrial, agro-business, corporate,
GMOs, processed
conventional
technological
EVIL
Nasty, gross, horrible, crap, poison,
chemicals, artificial, junk
Foodists at Wilson are sure to make clear their feelings toward good and bad food.
“Yummy” and “evil” are two emic terms I have found to be good representatives of the two
ends of the spectrums. I would like to verify the reality of the terms and connotations of
this chart. Although most students, upon seeing, for instance, a box of macaroni, would not
exclaim “evil!”, the thought is sometimes there, and this surfaces in various situations. Truth
be told, I have, on at least two occasions, heard food explicitly referred to as evil. I think
that both times the comment was clarified as referring to the whole food system, ultimately.
Yummy, on the other hand, is an adjective in constant use, yet is much more vague; it’s value
connotation is somewhat hidden. However we can see its connotations more clearly when it
is used in circumstances other than food: yummy can refer to time spent between two
friends, a meal shared, pleasant conversation and warm, “homey” feelings in general. These
two terms, although simplified to encompass two extreme ends of a value set, retain more
specificity than the simple “good” and “bad.” The drawing below depicts some terms found
in Table 2.
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Figure III.F
Potlucks: A Sacred Ceremony. Another fact that points to the sacred quality of good
food—it being mana, something with life-giving force—is that in a largely secular
community, the only time I have witnessed group prayer is at group meals—potlucks, to be
precise. Although neither Dubisch or Belasco mentioned potlucks, I have found them to be
of great importance, as a kind of religious rite. Not all students on campus attend potlucks;
it is mainly the foodists which do.20 A potluck is a place for people to come together and
reaffirm shared values while using food as a vessel for the display of such values. Thus a
moment of silence before eating is common, as is holding hands, sighing and smiling over
the food in admiration, invocation of the source of the food (the farmer, land, etc.) and
displays of sharing (feeding and serving one another).
Sacred Milk and Eggs: Good Food Distribution
Good food is limited, and thus its distribution is meaningful. In the following
excerpt, Steve, a man on the farm crew, shows how food plays out as a source of “mana” in
the larger culture around farming in general, as a symbol for entry into the select group that
gets to live out the institution’s values.
Potlucks predominantly take place in the following dormitories: Ecodorm, Wellness, Ballfield A,
and Shepard—with a few exceptions. Faculty also seem to be involved in potlucks on occasion, this
being the main instance in which on-campus faculty visit the dormitories.
20
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Wyn: What do you feel about how people will say, like, “Well, Wilson doesn’t have
fraternities—”
Steve: “—But they have the farm boys.” You know, that’s a great question, Wyn.
Um, Well that’s one aspect of the crew that I don’t like. And I don’t like being
associated with the farm, I mean, all my friends are boys that work on the farm crew
so they’re farm boys. To tell you the truth, this semester, I really think that there
aren’t—cause the perception I think is that people think that the farm boys are
chauvinistic assholes. And, um, I don’t like elitist, I like, you know, I like equality.
If somebody comes down to the farm shop, I wanna make them feel as welcome as
all hell, say “Hey, how’s it goin’? Want some milk and eggs?” You know, I’m not
cool because I work on the farm crew, and that person not as cool as me because
they work on, you know, admissions crew—who cares? And I think that they’re
just as valuable of a person in this community as I am. I think, I think that the
stereotype is going to change because the group of boys, and the group of girls on
the farm crew, are really good group of people. And, um, I think also sometimes,
people’s idea of the farm being kind of elitist and kind of tightly bonded, are
because, it is tightly bonded, and because people, if they don’t understand things
completely they don’t want to associate with them, so they don’t…I’m sorry…I,
uh…people are not gonna be willing to come to the farm because they know
nothing about farming. Or it’s something completely new to them. And then, they
see these kids down there, and it’s probably 95 percent of them, farming is really
new to them, too. But they really think it’s cool that they’re down there, and
nobody actually knows what’s going on down at the farm. And I think that kinda
carries into it.
According to this passage, the way that Steve would show his inclusiveness is by
offering food from the farm to outsiders. Food, in this case milk and eggs, are the
material representations of the farm’s values—local milk and eggs from the farm being
far superior to those you could buy in the store, by virtue of their homegrown quality.
More specifically, Steve is defending the farm crew. Rather than being an elitist group
of knowledgeable experts, Steve shows that the crew really has no pedestal to stand on.
First off, they are mostly rich white kids that have no authentic farming background:
“probably 95 percent of them, farming is really new to them, too.” Secondly, even if
they seem uppity at first, in reality they are willing to allow others in on their monopoly
of cultural symbols. The first and foremost way that Steve imagines this happening is
through giving outsiders the chance to consume the same food that farm members
have access to. There are not enough eggs and not enough milk to feed the entire
school. The distribution of these goods is carried out according to a hierarchy. Farm
crew members have first pick, then those closest to them, who are more aware of the
process you have to go through to get the food. Lastly will come people who have no
personal ties to farm crew members. Thus to announce that someone is welcome to
milk and eggs is to welcome them into a relatively small circle of farm-friendly
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students. In this way, food not only serves as a kind of mana but also lends meaning
in the way that it is distributed. This dynamic also partially explains why the farm crew
is held in the highest esteem (more so than any other crew): it is the group of people
who produce the food that serves as a sacred item to the community, helping sustain
shared values.
Foodism: An Ambiguous Binary Opposition
Whether looked at as a religion, a key symbol, a political statement, or an aesthetic
preference, foodism constitutes a distinction that is ambiguous (meaning it is learned, rather
than inherent). Table 3 illustrates the binary opposition of key foods.
Good
Garlic, avacado, eggplant, root vegetables,
rice and beans, yogurt, beef, honey, fresh
herbs, bread, whole grains, dark chocolate,
Pisgah beer or homebrew, raw vegetables,
gourmet cheese and wine
Table 3.
Bad
White bread, preserved meats, American
cheese, milk chocolate, high fructose corn
syrup, box macaroni, chicken patties,
macdonald’s anything, circus peanuts,
overcooked vegetables
Even though foodists see the distinction between good and bad food as a natural biological
difference, it is not so. Although there are obviously biologically different affects on the
body from certain foods, this is definitely not the primary reason that some food is
considered better than others. The primary logic to food preferences is that food choices
show off one’s fundamental values. What I would like to emphasize is that this logic, being
politically and culturally inspired, is not known by everyone. Thus the distinction between
good and bad food is an ambiguous one.
This leads me to question, “so what about the people who don’t have this
distinction?” I have found that this distinction is capable of forming a basis for the play of
cultural capital. Cultural capital is a vessel for the reproduction of social hierarchy and thus
food distinction or preference is one of the many factors that leads to the continuance of
inequality at our college. Seeing that the distinction—foodism, that is—is found more
commomnly and more deeply in students from a higher demographic background, this
constitutes a form of classism.
I have found an answer to my original question: how and why is inequality
reproduced in a community that strives for egalitarianism? My answer is that our emphasis
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on individual agency, and our refusal to see that tastes may be prescribed rather than
original, leads to the eventual confusion of values and intents. If students understood that
much of the reasoning behind their preferences was outside of their jurisdiction, they might
also understand that it is not someone’s worth that is reflected by their food preferences—
just their background. This classism has more implications when combined with certain
aspects of the coming of age ritual, which I will address in the next section.
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Part IV
Foodism and the Coming of Age Ritual
Food Dichotomy Linked to Other Dichotomies
If good food is associated with idealism, and bad with realism, then we can combine
the two discourses—coming of age and food—to produce a compressed set of oppositions.
Shown below is the coming of age chart I listed before, this time with the foods and food
descriptors added. I could go into more detail and include more examples, but the main idea
is clear from this representation.
Comin
g of
Age
Food
Idealism Realism
Play Work
rich white kid or trustafarian working class or
normal/average/everyday American
Immaturity Maturity
Irresponsible Responsible
Crazy, insane, freaked out Directed, sane, normal, straight
Out of it, fucked up on top of things, got their shit together
Slacker Busy
Lazy Workaholic
Good Bad
Garlic, avacado, eggplant, root White bread, preserved meats,
vegetables, rice and beans, yogurt, American cheese, milk chocolate, high
beef, honey, fresh herbs, bread, whole fructose corn syrup, box macaroni,
grains, dark chocolate, Pisgah beer or chicken patties, macdonald’s anything,
homebrew, raw vegetables, gourmet circus peanuts, overcooked vegetables
cheese and wine
Local, organic, Global, industrial, agro-business,
homegrown/homemade, no corporate, GMOs, processed
preservatives or additives
sustainable conventional
natural technological
YUMMY EVIL
Delicious, wonderful, love, tasty, Nasty, gross, horrible, crap, poison,
wholesome, life-giving, sustaining, chemicals, artificial, junk
health, fatty
Table 4.
It is important to understand that each side is a list of associations, not actual preferences.
(That is, not all environmentalists love root vegetables; I have found that many students
really dislike them.) Nonetheless, however, each of these terms is generally associated with
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good or bad, yummy or evil. Practically, compressing the two charts is misleading and does
not exactly work out, as it is a very complex logic and the different associations are never
explicitly related to each other. However, the two binary oppositions do intersect, and do so
relatively frequently. I will now look at some of the implications of this intersection.
Food and Class. Most readily apparent from these associations is the tendency for food to
become aligned with class. Of course, this is nothing new—food has been aligned with class
for ages. In Western civilization, cabbage has been associated with the poor of England,
collard greens with African Americans. Alternately, steak and wine are both symbols of
wealth and class in these societies. In Wilson student culture, however, food has become
aligned with class through the vessel of the coming of age ritual, which sets off idealism (as a
rich white kid trait) against realism (as a working-class trait). Students are expected to stick
to their values, but too much dogma against bad food tends to be criticized as elitist and
idealistic.
Real food, then, undermines ideal food by positing it as class-specific and elitist.
This is the reason that some students eat, for instance, Slim Jims, with the preface “Fuck that
shit” (meaning the pressure to eat ideal food) often paired with a comment referencing
middle class tastes. This is one way in which students link themselves to the working class,
and distance themselves from the rich white kid identity.
If junk food is associated with lower classes, then the values surrounding junk food
are in tow. The implications of this are clear: working class people are thought to not care
about the environment, to have opposing values, because the food they eat is associated with
that those values. This is not entirely true, obviously, as often working class people might
have similar values as middle class people but not be able to afford organic food.
Reinforcing the idea that working class people have opposing values only builds walls
between different groups of people.
Thus the same classism mentioned at the conclusion of the last section is furthered
by the coming of age ritual ideology when combined with such aesthetic arenas as food.
Somewhere a balance needs to be made between individuals’ agency and lack thereof. The
American emphasis on individuality naturalizes the idea that each person gets to choose
what they eat; the American capitalist market makes that statement false. People eat what
they eat for a variety of reasons other than personal choice. Perhaps accepting the fact that
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we do not entirely control our lives, and even our consumption, would allow people more
opportunities to follow whatever values they choose. Certainly, if there were less pressure at
Wilson to conform to prescribed ideas of taste, students like Savannah might have more of a
realistic chance to enjoy the benefits of the College that are currently only enjoyed by
students who are already accustomed to living with privileges.
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References Cited
Belasco, Warren
2005 Food and the Counterculture: A Story of Bread and Politics. The Cultural Politics
of Food and Eating: A Reader. Ed. James L. Watson & Melissa L Caldwell. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Bourdieu, Pierre
1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Dubisch, Jill
2004 You Are What You Eat: Religious Aspects of the Health Food Movement.
Investigating Culture: An Experimental Introduction to Anthropology. Ed. Carol
Delaney. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Eckert, Penelope
1989 Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Feinberg, Ben
2004 Rites of Passage. Encyclopedia of Religious Rites, Rituals and Festivals. Ed. Frank
A. Salamone. New York: Routledge.
Forrest, John
1988 Lord I’m Coming Home: Everyday Aesthetics in Tidewater, North Carolina.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Halle, David
1993 Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Hansen, Karen Tranberg
2004 The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion and
Culture. In Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 369-92.
Harbour, Clifford P., et al.
2003 Naming the Other: How Dominant Culture Privilege and Assimilation Affect
Selected Underrepresented Populations at the Community College. In Community
College Journal of Research and Practice, 27, 829-842.
Hebdige, Dick
1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.
Lemay Jr., Edward P. & Ashmore, Richard D.
2004 Reactions to Percieved Categorization by Others During the Transition to
College: Internalization and Self-Verification Processes. In Group Processes &
Intergroup Relations, 7(2), 173-187.
Lienhardt, Godfrey
1961 Divinity and Experience. Oxford: Clarendon.
Moffat, Michael
1989 Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press.
Nathan, Rebekah
2005 My freshman year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Ortner, Sherry
1973 On Key Symbols. In American Anthropologist, New Series, 75(5), 1338-1346.
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Peterson, R. A. & Kern, R. M.
1996 Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore. In American Sociological
Review, 61, 900-907.
Thornton, Sarah
1996 Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover, New England:
Wesleyan.
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Appendices
Appendix A: Original Interview Questions
(2 February, 2007)













Where are you from? What kind of schools have you attended or jobs have you had
before you came to Wilson?
What brought you to Wilson? Why?
What was your first impression of Wilson?
Was it different that what you’d expected? If so, how?
Since then (in your time at Wilson), how has your impression of Wilson changed—do
you see it any differently now?
Are there discrepancies between how Wilson represents itself to the outside, and how it
actually is on the inside?
How is life at Wilson different than what you imagine (or, if you are a transfer, what
you’ve experienced) at other colleges? What particular experiences, in other words, do you
think are unique to Wilson?
What activities do you think Wilson kids do more than other college students? (Do you
have any opinions about why they might do those things?
Name three or four students that are very Wilson…What makes them more Wilson?
and three or four others that are not very Wilson…What makes them less Wilson?
What aspects of you do or don’t make you close to the average Wilson student? Or, if
you will, more or less Wilson?
What kinds of values, opinions or lifestyles do you feel like Warren Wilson, as an
institution, encourages in the student body?
Do you agree with those opinions or values/do you incorporate that lifestyle into your
own life? How?
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Appendix B: Revised Interview Questions
(23 February, 2007)
Introductions—Tell me about yourself













What is your name?
Where are you from?
What kind of town did you grow up in?
What kind of highschool did you go to?—Describe your highschool experience.
What brought you to Wilson? What was your first impression of Wilson?
How long have you been here? Is it different that what you’d expected? If so, how?
Warren Wilson …“is not for everyone“…what do you think about that slogan?
Compare Wilson students with non-Wilson students—are there many differences?
Can you tell me a story about the coolest thing you’ve experienced at Wilson so far that you
wouldn’t experience elsewhere?
What’s the weirdest or most ridiculous or stupidest thing you’ve experienced here?
What would you say to a person who knew nothing about Wilson excpet they’d heard of the
Bubbas?
What aspects of you do or don’t make you close to the average Wilson student? Or, if you
will, more or less Wilson?
Do you have a myspace or facebook account?...Describe yourself to me, as if you were
writing for your myspace profile:
o What music do you listen to?
o What are your interests/extracurricular activities that you’re involved in?
o If you don’t mind me asking, what substances do you use—
alcohol/tobacco/marijuana?
o Do you know your sign?
o Do you think there is any credibility to the idea that ghosts or spirits exist?
o Do you consider yourself as having a religion? If so, could you describe it? What
religion did you grow up with?
o Do you like dark or light chocolate?
o What is your favorite kind of food? Describe your idea of the perfect meal, in
depth.
o When you go to the grocery store, what do you pick out to buy? (You just
mentioned what you’d like to buy, now tell me what you actually buy, either for
reasons of cost or whatever.)
 Describe the farm and garden crews at Wilson—would you ever want to be on those
crews?
 Why do you think those are such popular crews?
 What is your opinion towards farming? Are you interested in it at all?
 Has anyone in your family ever farmed?
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Appendix C: Interviewee Data
Psuedonym
Amy
Ashley
Becca
Caitlin
Charlie
Cindy
Hannah
Jess
Steve
Stuart
Ronda
Sex
F
F
F
F
M
F
F
F
M
M
F
Age
24
22
20
18
21
23
19
20
21
23
18
Class
4
4
3
1
2
3
1
1
4
4
1
Dorm
Day
Ballfield
Village
Vining
ANTC
Sutton
Wellness
Schafer
Sage
Sunderland
Sunderland
Work Crew
n/a
Admissions
Pottery
Heavy Duty
Music
WPO Safety
Wellness
Heavy Duty
Farm
(RA)
Paint
Appendix D: Drawing Prompts
1. A table set with food in two different ways. On one end, draw what you’d choose to eat, on the other,
draw what you wouldn’t want to eat. Or alternately: on one end draw good food, and on the other, bad.
(You can make it a top-down view if that helps.)
2. Yourself, doing your favorite thing on campus. Or alternately: you, in your favorite place on campus. Or
both. (Favorite can mean best, most meaningful, most important, most fun, etc.)
3. A self-portrait of you as a freshman, and then you as a senior. Include details to your appearance and
captions that will explain the changes that have taken place.
4. A map of Wilson, according to you. That is, put things on the map that you care about: where you go,
where you hang out, eat, etc. Leave off anything that you don’t care about. You can include yourself doing
your favorite activities.
5. The archetypical or stereotypical Warren Wilson student and the archetypical ‘outsider.’ Include details
about their appearance.
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Appendix E: Extra Drawings
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