An insight on Cultural Segregation: As taught by Winco.

Topic: 

Food

Source: 

My experience of restocking my refrigerator on this Saturday the 28^th of January and the aisles of the Winco and Murphys grocery.

Relation: 

As mentioned in Robbins on page 5, “ Food is one of the best illustrations of the differences between cultures”. In turn food is one of the integral and revealing parts of anthropology when comparing or examining different cultures.

Description:

After the disappointing realization of that my refrigerator was stocked with only condiments, my Saturday plans of nothing turned into a visit to the local supermarket. While browsing the aisles I became more and more aware of the distinct segregation of foods (and non food items) into ethnic groupings. Throughout the store one can find areas with a distinct theme focusing on items that could be stereotyped as Mexican, Italian, and Asian.  Each of these foci within the store contains the appropriate canned foods, spices and even nonfood items that one would associate with a particular culture.  This variety of food in one place is interesting as it illustrates an array of cultures within the American populous.  

Commentary & Analysis:

As I have been thinking about this division of foods into cultural stereotypes within a grocery store, I have come to the conclusion that this separation illustrates more about our American culture than the themed groups of items. By this I mean that how the shelves are stocked in a grocery store, will illustrate the construct of how that particular store has interpreted what a specific cultures meal will look like. Due to this reasoning we have all grain based pastas whether Italian or not grouped with all of the Italian seasonings and sauces and all rice based noodle products in the Asian foods aisle. In turn this could be an illustration of how a majority of American citizens view a particular cultures cuisine. Additionally these representative constructs of foreign cuisine also illustrate two other integral parts of American culture; wealth and ease. The construct of money making is essentially what roots all American business and what better way to suggest other items to be purchased than to put the chips next to the salsa or soy sauce with white rice. In turn the cultural grouping seen within a variety of grocery stores may be the result of the power of suggestion and the money to be made with it. Lastly I feel that this division of foods may more so reflect the sense of ease or laziness that is ever present in American culture. What I am suggesting is that items are placed within these cultural stereotypes because it’s an easy way to generalize where things should be placed within the store. Rather than having a section for all types of rice, most stores put rice in 2 locations with Asian themed foods or in the Mexican themed foods. This could even be viewed as laziness on the part of the workers stocking the shelves or a resultant of customers themselves buying items that require the least amount of walking through the store. With both idea of wealth and the laziness it becomes a profitable scenario to sort foods into generalized cultures in which we as customers and as Americans can recognize and use as a form of organization within the chaos that is a grocery store.  As I finish typing this I realize that this became less about food and more about how we as a culture organize food and what it says about us.