Observing and Analyzing Ritual Behavior

Observing and Analyzing Ritual Behavior

Introduction

Margaret Visser's advice has been quoted on Sage Asian Advice on Soup Etiquette, and the advice looks to me entirely misleading. It reads: "A Chinese banquet often begins with fruit and ends with soup." Being a Chinese myself and have attended numerous banquets, I have never seen fruit being served at the beginning and soup at the end. It will help if Ms. Visser can clarify what kind of banquet she had actually observed or attended. The regular way is soup being served close to the beginning after the cold and hot appetizers, and fruit is served at the very end together with dessert.

Observing and Analyzing Ritual Behavior

The Rituals of Dinner is one of those agreeable books intended to demonstrate that the ordinary . things we do every day are completely arbitrary and irrational. Sitting down at the table to eat dinner, for instance. Extremely strange. The ancient Greeks had it right: reclining on couches, propped up on one elbow, eating with one hand off of small individual tables (no plates, no forks). Old paintings to the contrary, Jesus and his disciples followed the same procedure at the Last Supper. As for why you can't spear your food with your knife, the assumption is that it would quickly lead to dinner guests attacking and perhaps eating other guests. Not to cast aspersions on cannibals — they have their etiquette too, much more elaborate than ours: ''The Aztec cared intensely how they ate people and also who (sic) they ate, when, and where.'' So did other societies: ''Failure to eat a dead parent might mean poor health, or barrenness, or weak children...people prefer to grind up bones or burn the body to ashes, then eat the powder mixed in a drink, or with, say, mashed banana.''

A belief that food sharing is one characteristic that sets humans apart from animals guides Visser--a professor of classical literature and author of Much Depends on Dinner ( LJ 1/88)--on an exploration of table manners, food taboos, and eating rituals found in cultures throughout the world. Utilizing sources from literature, history, anthropology, and sociology, Visser offers a balanced explanation of how and why rules governing eating arose and why they persist. This explanation is followed by several chapters full of examples of the wide range of eating behaviors found in historical and contemporary cultures. Visser has collected a wealth ...