Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society

Brazilian Food: Race, Class and Identity in Regional Cuisines by Jane Fajans 60’s. An anthropology professor, Jane Fajans draws on food as an avenue of entry to the regional and social diversities of Brazil. The distinctive attitudes toward food in this sprawling country reveal the alternately competing and blending forces of the three main groups – indigenous, colonial and African. The same cannot be said for our own country where the original peoples have been swept aside and where even the cooking that came from Africa is seen, as she says, as ethnic, outside the mainstream. Perhaps the differences between the Portuguese and the English could play a part. In any case, Brazilians pride themselves on their meals and have in mind the goal that diners will come away well satisfied. Jane describes the colorful food markets, fiestas, and street venders of delicious wares. We learn of Pará’s use of manioc and the amazing and perhaps health-giving açai from the Amazon. Interspersed with description of home cooking and world-class restaurant haute cuisine are recipes. If I knew where to get manioc starch, I might try to make tacacá. I wonder if it would taste as good if you ate it out of something other than a gourd. The meal which can boast of being the national dish is feijoada, which begins with dried meat and then grows with sausages, beef tongue, and of course black beans over the course of several days. It turns out, as Jane shows, that this country-wide feast is truly one that separates the classes. It is prepared by the hired help who have scant chance of enjoying it. If you would like to try it, though, the recipe is included. I love the idea of learning about culture through food. Jane has certainly found a mouth-watering way to attract students to the field of anthropology. I ran this comment by my writing group, who all wanted to help me find manioc flour. Here is a message I got later from a member of the group, Lori R.: As I thought I remembered it called by something else. Cassava flour or Tapioca Flour. I have both in my pantry. Try Walmart’s gluten free section or Whole Foods in Ft Myers as I am not sure where I got them. Every time I see something exotic, I pick it up as I am sure my next keto recipe will call for it. Lol Found this recipe for Brazilian Farofa 8 tablespoons butter  1 tablespoon palm oil  1 large onion (finely chopped)  2 cups manioc flour    {This needs to be coarse not fine} Salt (to taste)  Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)  Optional: 1/2 cup chopped black olives  Optional: 1/2 cup diced hard-boiled egg Gather the ingredients. Melt the butter and palm oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onions and cook until very soft and golden, about 10 minutes. Stir in the manioc flour and cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 more minutes until well mixed and evenly toasted and lightly browned. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in optional black olives and/or hard-boiled eggs if desired. Serve and enjoy!

Where the Roads All End; Photography and Anthropology in the Kalahari by Ilisa Barbash ’77. This book tells three stories. First is the story of Lisa Barbash, Curator of Visual Anthropology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, who sorted through 40,000 photographs taken during the course of eight excursions to Africa, went through all the notes and papers of the participants, interviewed those who were still around, and put it all together into this beautiful book, which memorializes the other two stories. The overriding narrative concerns the Marshall family, their travels and their efforts to keep a record of their interactions with the indigenous people they met and befriended. When the family began their adventures, Laurence and Lorna, the parents, were in their fifties and John and Elizabeth were teens. Laurence, an extremely successful businessman, could have rested on his laurels, but instead he wanted to bond his family by traveling deep into the Kalahari (where the roads all end) to see if there were really hunter-gatherers uncontaminated by modernity. The third story concerns the Ju/’hoansi (and to a lesser extent the /Gwi). When the Marshalls encountered these people, commonly called Bushmen, they were living in successful equilibrium with their environment, having enough to meet their needs. In the course of the 11 years of the expeditions, from 1950 until 1961, the Marshalls witnessed the encroachment of the surrounding world. They watched sadly and tried to help as events overtook Ju/’hoansi traditions and way of life. The Marshalls proved to be quick studies at the science of anthropology. Laurence organized, Lorna studied the children and kinship, John made several acclaimed films showing the people going about their lives, and Elizabeth wrote books including The Harmless People. They were guided by Margaret Mead; Lisa quotes her statement that the best way to understand ethos is through disciplined use of the observer’s own emotional response. With human beings, disinterested measuring and observing provide only shallow results. I think of John Barth’s line in Lost in the Funhouse : “the observer makes perfect observation impossible.” Heisenberg shows that this holds true even in the more pure sciences. Out on the Kalahari, the emotional bonds that form between scientists and their subjects is at the core of the story. At one point Lorna says that if she had it to do over again, she would not have come because the ruts carved out by their trucks led the way to the isolated people and hastened the end of their world. Africa was of course going through all manner of upheaval during those times. New nations were emerging as colonial powers lost their hold. White farmers, profiting from the chaotic times, sometimes captured Ju’/hoansi and made them slaves. In moves reminiscent of what native Americans endured, their land was taken over. Here we see the story first hand through the poignant and gorgeous photographic record.

Labor’s Lost, women’s Work and the Early Modern English Stage by Natasha Korda ’79. We all know that Juliet, Lady Macbeth and every female part in Shakespeare was played by a male actor in the time of Shakespeare. What were the women doing? Natasha explores the tasks in and about the theater that women performed, expanding our knowledge of how much woman’s ingenuity, and expertise contributed to the plays and to society at large. Who washed, starched and pressed all those elaborate ruffs? Obviously, the women. More than that, widows and unmarried woman were instrumental in the lending of money for interest, making capital available when direly needed. Natasha is thorough in her examination of women’s contributions. I was particularly fascinated by her analysis of The Merchant of Venice as Portia portrays the newfound power of a married woman having economic clout of her own, the analysis of the cries of street venders as they impact the theater (Hamlet’s instructions to the actors) and commerce, and the use of puppets in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair ( of particular interest to me since I wrote my dissertation many years ago on the interplay of puppet theater and live theater in the twentieth century.)