Re: Cultural anthropology

Julia E Smith (jesst2+@pitt.edu)
16 Dec 1996 17:57:28 GMT

So start talking! This *is*, despite all appearances, a newsgroup in
which we *ought* to be talking about cultural anthropology. So, don't
just complain. TAKE SCI.ANTHROPOLOGY BACK!

As a beginning to this, I've been thinking about gardening recently, and
about the connections between suburbanites growing veggies for the table
and peasants in the Third world growing most of the food they eat.
Clearly, there are differences. Suburbanites talk about growing food as
a leisure activity; peasants mostly don't. However, peasants do sometimes
talk about their work in subsistence agriculture as different - more fun
or at least more interesting - from their other work (whether as workers
or in growing cash crops). This is even more so when they talk about
"gardens," small amounts of a large number of foodstuffs grown near the
house.

So, anyway, what does gardening mean to people in the US? Is gardening
here different from "subsistence agriculture" there? Or is it all the
same?

Julia Smith
jesst2+@pitt.edu
University of Pittsburgh