Freedom from Want by Norman Rockwell, an iconic image of an American Thanksgiving meal

A communal meal is a meal eaten by a group of people. It often but not always serves a social, symbolic and/or ceremonial purpose. For some, the act of eating communally defines humans as compared to other species.[1] Communal meals have long been of interest to both archeologists[2][3] and anthropologists.[4][5][6][7] Much scholarly work about communal eating has focused on special occasions but everyday practices of eating together with friends, family or colleagues is also a form of communal eating.[8][9]

Communal eating is closely bound up with commensality (the sociological concept of eating with other people).[10][11] Communal eating is also bound up with eating and drinking together to cement relations, to establish boundaries and hierarchies as well as for pleasure.[11]

Some examples of communal meals are the Native American potlatch, the Christian Agape feast, the Thanksgiving meal, cocktail parties, and company picnics.

See also

References

  1. ^ Fresco, Louise (2015). Hamburgers In Paradise: The Stories Behind the Food We Eat (1st ed.). Princeton University Press. p. 560. ISBN 9780691163871.
  2. ^ Hayden, Brian (29 September 2014). The power of feasts : from prehistory to the present. ISBN 978-1-107-04299-5. OCLC 1313871862.
  3. ^ Bray, Tamara L., ed. (28 May 2007). The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires. ISBN 978-0-306-48246-5. OCLC 1086492959.
  4. ^ Whitehead, Harriet (2000). Food rules : hunting, sharing, and tabooing game in Papua New Guinea. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-09705-9. OCLC 1123902594.
  5. ^ Simon, Scott (2015-11-19). "Real People, Real Dogs, and Pigs for the Ancestors: The Moral Universe of "Domestication" in Indigenous Taiwan". American Anthropologist. 117 (4): 693–709. doi:10.1111/aman.12350. ISSN 0002-7294.
  6. ^ Strathern, Andrew (1971). Rope of Moka. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-55816-0. OCLC 958554322.
  7. ^ Gopi, Anil (December 2021). "Feasting Ritually: An Ethnography on the Implications of Feasts in Religious Rituals". The Oriental Anthropologist: A Bi-annual International Journal of the Science of Man. 21 (2): 359–374. doi:10.1177/0972558X211057159. ISSN 0972-558X. S2CID 244644874.
  8. ^ Dunbar, R. I. M. (September 2017). "Breaking Bread: the Functions of Social Eating". Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology. 3 (3): 198–211. doi:10.1007/s40750-017-0061-4. ISSN 2198-7335. PMC 6979515. PMID 32025474. S2CID 151610874.
  9. ^ "Family meals — a thing of the past?", Food, Health and Identity, Routledge, pp. 44–61, 2013-04-15, doi:10.4324/9780203443798-7, ISBN 978-0-203-44379-8, retrieved 2022-10-31
  10. ^ Fischler, Claude (2011). "Commensality, Society and Culture". Social Science Information. 50 (3–4): 528–548. doi:10.1177/0539018411413963. S2CID 56427179.
  11. ^ a b Kerner, Susanne; Chou, Cynthia; Warmind, Morten, eds. (2015). Commensality : from everyday food to feast. ISBN 978-1-4742-4532-6. OCLC 1201426965.


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