Comparison Assignment

"The Abominable Pig"

In “The Abominable Pig” Marvin Harris stimulates conflicting conversations between the ecological and economic reasons verses the religious and cultural reasons for pork being forbidden. Harris first compares pork verses other types of meat, including how he explains that pork can gain weight faster than any other animal; which is one of the main reasons why pork is such a beneficial meat for humans to consume.

Harris takes a significant amount of time to explain, and back up why religion plays such a strong role in why pork is not allowed. He uses different verses from different religions to back up what they say about the subject. And compares and contrasts the benefits of ruminants in comparison to pigs; which are not a ruminant. Pigs also can’t be used for a variety of tasks other being slaughtered for meat, unlike that of animals that can be used for the wool as well as pulling plows. In an ecological scenario, Harris explains how people would get a greater premium for raising ruminants and a greater penalty for raising swine as another example of this swine to ruminant comparison.

Not only does he explain the importance of ruminants, but also goes into talking about the camel and its importance and also how it became justified and into the criteria of meat not good to eat. In the end, Harris reinforces the taboo of pork related to the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam and overall explains how these religions came to view pork the way they do now.

"The Culinary Triangle"

In “The Culinary Triangle” Claude Levi-Strauss argues that the basis of the culinary triangle consists of the raw, the cooked, and the rotted foods. He starts off by comparing the “vowel triangle” to the “consonant triangle” to better help us understand the importance of our culinary triangle.

Just like language cooking is a “truly universal form of human activity,” and that the culinary triangle is universal. Foods are all raw, cooked, or rotted. But he also describes categories within this triangle that are roasting, boiling and smoking; which each have different significance within different cultures. Levi-Strauss states that “nothing is simply cooked, but mush be cooked in one fashion or another,” which shows how the aspect of universal is applies to the three different forms of cooking. He explains clearly how all of these levels correlate through a diagram of the layers of the culinary triangle.

He explains the different significances that each of the parts of the triangle have. Roasting in aligned with nature and boiled aligned with culture. This is partially why boiled food (meat) is more culturally diverse and has more significance. Smoking the food aligns both with culture and nature. Ultimately, Levi-Strauss concludes that in each specific case, “the cooking of a society is a language in which it unconsciously translates its structure,” essentially meaning that food can be used to help other people gain knowledge into a different culture.

Comparison

In “The Abominable Pig” Marvin Harris uses culture and religion along with ecological and economic reasons why pork has been so forbidden. And in “The Culinary Triangle” Claude Levi-Strauss instead illustrates a universal basis for all foods; the raw, the cooked and the rotted. Both “The Abominable Pig” and “The Culinary Triangle” describe how culture has a part in our decisions and permanent actions with our food.