1977 intracultural diversity and nutritional anthropology

7/30/2019 1977 Intracultural Diversity and Nutritional Anthropology

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Gretel H PeltoNorge W Jerome

Intracultural diversity andnutritional anthropology

Modernization, Cultural Pluralism, and Health Care

Historically, cultural anthropologists have been remarkably uninterested inthe nutritional systems of the communities they study. Ethnographers usuallydescribe food procurement under the general heading of "economics," but foodpreparation, dietary patterns, and eating habits have received less systematic treatment. Assessment of nutritional quality and quantity is rarely, if ever, a subject ofgeneral ethnographic research. A few striking exceptions to this general lack ofanthropological attention to diet do exist, most notably Audrey Richard's Hunger andWork in a Savage Tribe and the work of Margaret Mead and her collaborators intheir research during World War II on food consumption habits of the Americanpublic.

Of course, applied anthropologists have been working in public health andnutrition programs, but the lack of more widespread interest in their work issurprising given the long-term anthropological concern with integrating social andbiological aspects of human behavior. The study of nutrition is a biocultural issue,par excellence. The consequences of food intake are biological; that is, individualbiological functioning is directly and continuously affected by food intake over thecourse of a lifetime. But the nature of food intake-what people eat, how, when,where, and how much-is heavily influenced by social, political, and culturalprocesses. From assessment of nutrient distribution at the national level to analysis ofnutrient distribution within communities and families, social variables are an integralpart of nutritional outcomes.There are, however, both methodological and theoretical barriers to asuccessful integration of the social and biological aspects of nutritional research. Abrief review of the major types of research by nutritionists and anthropologistsshould serve to demonstrate the nature of the problem.

Research within nutritional science usually takes one of the following forms:1. Studies by biochemists of the physiological functions of some nutrient.

Frequently such research examines the relationships of different levels of a nutrient(vitamin, mineral, lipid, and so forth) to metabolic behavior, some aspects of growth,or disease process. Methodologically this type of research involves collecting datafr9m individual subjects (human orThis is the first publication of this paper. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint must be obtainedfrom the authors and publisher.


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Pelto & Jeromejlntracultural Diversity and Nutritional Anthropology 323

animal), with or without experimental manipulation of some of the relevantparameters. Relationships among the selected variables are then analyzed inorder to generalize about human physiological processes.2. Large-scale surveys of populations using biochemical and clinicalassessments to determine nutritional status and/or interview techniques toelicit data on food intake, dietary patterning, and nutritional adequacy ofdiet, or some combination of each. In this type of research tile data arecol1ected from individuals to create descriptive generalizations about a population, which may be as small as a community or as large as a nation. Resultsare frequently presented in terms of percentages of the population characterized by particular nutritional states (for example, serum levels of vitaminsand minerals), food consumption levels, or nutritionai adequacy of diet.

3. Food habit surveys. Foods consumed by individuals, families, households, or ethnic and economic subgroups of communities are recorded for agiven period of time (using twen ty-four-hour recall, three-day records, sevenday inventories) and are used to determine dietary habits and nutritionalcomposition of food ingested. However, such surveys generally minimize thecultural and socioeconomic forces innuencing dietary practices.

Anthropological StudiesIn sociocultural anthropology research design is quite different. An older researchstyle, uncommon today, sought to describe tile cultural system of a people, oftenidentified as a tribe or ethnic group. Descriptions of groups such as "the Navajo" or"the Nuer" were often generated from research in a particular community, withspecial focus on a few trusted key informants who provided verbal informationabout "the way we do things" or "the way we used to do things."

More recently, a typical research style involves fieldwork in a community todescribe its cultural patterns. The focus tends to be on normative description-ofvalues, beliefs, and symbolic meanings of particular practices-as wel! as on descrip'tions of the usual way of carrying out subsistence activities, child training, and soon. Often the research concentrates on some particular aspect of community life,such as connict resolution, economic exchange, and kinship relations.

The research methods associated witil much of cuI tural an thropology (whether problem-oriented or aimed at ethnographic description) utilize a mixture of observation and interviews of a carefully selected sample of. the community. A grca tdeal of variability exists in the systematizing of data collection. Yet, with rare exceptions, the anthropologist produces a more or less generalized description oftypical or normative cultural patterns.

These problems with methodology have limited the integration of the biological and social aspects of nutrition in anthropological research. We can begin tosee why tllere have been serious problems in trying to rela te the do ta of nu tli tiollto those of cultural anthropology. Nutritional data are not easily artkuiatcd because anthropologists and nutritionists use different units of analysis and seck dif


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fcren t kinds of generaliza tions. (We might add that similar problems exist withina1l0,uopology, where the disjunction between the methods and data of physical andcultural antJlfopologists have been a barrier to the development of a true biocul-

ctural an tJuopology.)Of course, it is stating the obvious to suggest that disciplines differ in their

units of analysis and theoretical constructs. The real issue in interdisciplinary reosearch is whether units of analysis in one discipline can be identified with or articulated into units of analysis in another. Thus, the data of macrobiology (forexample, animal ecology) are not easily articula ted with research in chemistry, butwhen biologists focus on characteristics of individuals (on particular components ofblood, hormones, and so forth) then collaboration with chemists becomes meaningful. The growth of research on human biochemistry demonstrates how effectiveinterdisciplinary collaboration can be when the data can be articulated.

What is required to bring cultural anthropology and nutrition into similarcongruity? From the anthropological side, we must shift from an interest in normative description to a focus on intracultural diversity of behaviors and beliefs. Wemust describe societies in terms of the ranges of variation that are the realities ofhuman life. For example, economic and political structures must be described notonly in general terms but also in terms of the way they are reflected in individualbehavior. Just as the value of biological parameters is measured for individuals, sothe social and cuI tural variables must be measured for individuals. When anthropologists work in this way, their data can be readily linked with the data of nutritionists.

From the nutrition side must come recognition that social processes are everybit as complex as biological processes and that their measurement is as difficult.Too often, for example, nutritional researchers have assumed that simply askingpeople about their income is a sufficient measure of socioeconomic status or thatrespondents' description of the composition of breakfast provides ample data for:letermining nutritional adequacy of that meal. Again, residence in particular:conomically marginal neighborhoods or villages is sometimes considered sufficiento identify low income status. Both verbal reports and place of residence can missdtogether the subtle but significant differences in families' economic situationsl1at may strongly affect nutrient intake. Just as biological measures are powerfullylffccted by the choice of the measurement technique, so too are social variables.rhe met1lOdological sophistica lion required to measure sociocultural factors is nomaIler than that required to produce valid biological data. Therefore, in additiono congruence of units anthropologists and nutritionists also need an appreciation)f each otJlers' theoretical constructs and methodological problems.

Recen tly, some researchers have tried to resolve some of the methodologicallroblems in cultural anthropology and human nutrition by trying to account foriiversilies in food consumption, nutritional adequacy, and nutritional status ofndividuals in communities.

In our work we have found that a research strategy that assumes intracultural[iversity is very useful for understanding the relationships of food consumption to


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other social and cultural factors. For example, Jerome carried out intensive researchwith twentythree black households in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as part of a largerproject on foodconsumption patterns of low income black families. The twentythree households did not present a homogeneous picture. Rather they exhibited avariety of eating and food preferences. What explains the differences? It was foundthat national and racial indices of socioeconomic status were not very useful inclassifying the respondents (Jerome 1968). In terms of education, occupation,and income, most of the families could be placed at the bottom of the tripartiteclass structure. The characteristics that did make a difference in food consumption patterns included family background and length of residence in the South,time of migration and length of residence in the North, as well as home ownership,church membership, and several other sociocultural factors. By focusing on thedifference within the community and systematically collecting data on individualand family characteristics, it was possible to delineate the major variables thataffected food consumption and to examine the adaptation in progress. The researchin Milwaukee reveals how people discard old modes of food consumption as theylearn to use the resources of a new environment.

In research in a Mexican community DeWalt and Pelto (in press) studiedfactors that contribute to dietary complexity. Within the community there wereimpressive differences in the varieties of food consumed, ranging from diets ofmainly tortillas, beans, and chilis to those that were well-balanced and varied.Analysis of data on social status and beliefs suggests that in this community people's beliefs about the characteristics of particular foods have relatively little to dowith the frequency of their consumption. Dietary complexity is, apparently, muchmore strongly affected by household composition, access to land, and occupation.As in the research in Milwaukee, an approach to the community that focused onnormative patterns would have failed to discover such relationships.

In an interesting study in a neighboring community in Mexico, MiriamMunoz de Ch~vez and her colleagues (1974) studied differences in families of malnourished and well-nourished children. Excluding families at both upper and lowerends of the economic spectrum, the researchers focused on families of farmersthirty-six families with well-nourished children and thirty-seven families with chilodren who showed unequivocal signs of malnutrition. Among the variables that differentiated the two groups were: (1) differences in the ratio of children to adultswithin a household; (2) sex differences (68 percent of malnourished children weregirls; 62 percent of well-nourished children were boys); (3) diet of mother; and(4) weaning history of the child. The researchers felt that the interpretation ofthese results and other findings should be approached cautiously because of thecomplexity of the data. They did not find any minor variations in feeding practicesor in child care that might cause large differences in the physical state and healthof the children. What was found was a spider's web of facts that needed to beproven (1974).

We should add to the comments by Munoz and colleagues that in that part ofMexico, as elsewhere, even among seemingly homogeneous communal-land farmers


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;~1l1be significant differences in economic status, based on access to payingJiffe'rences in agricultural productivity, and number of wage earners in the}old. Time and again we have found that assumptions about the same socialn are not warranted when households are examined more closely.In the sociocultural system of the United States there has been a good dealcussion recently about the health food movement, vegetarianism, and sofood faddism. These phenomena are often discussed in general terms, sug; that vegetarians are all pretty much alike and people know a food faddistthey see one. But a closer look at the health food people shows a fascinatingity in their complex networks. Even though articulation among the diverses is maintained to some extent through magazines, books, and other publicaas well as by traveling food evangelists, there are notable differences amonglbiotic enthusiasts, followers of Guru Mallaraji, Diet-foraSmallPlanet veges, and various meateating health food people (Kandel and Pelto, in press).rcsearch demonstrated the importance of social networks in affecting indioI food consumption patterns.A recent multivariate study of factors affecting malnutrition was carried out.e economist F. James Levinson and associates (1974) in a rural area of theb in northern India. The study sample comprised 496 children, including bothats (an economically and socially dominant group) and the Ramdasias (landigrlcultural laborers). Data included relatively short interviews with the chilos mothers, examination of stool samples, and height, weight, and healthures. Nutritional status was determined from height, weight, and age accordo the wellknown Harvard standards. Nutrient intake was estimated for eachthrough the use of the twentyfour hour recall method. Roughly three timesany of the Ramdasia children as Jat children were categorized as having third~emalnutrition.It is perhaps not surprising that the sex of the child was a major variable in

icting malnutrition in this Punjab population. Severe malnutrition appearede about seven times as frequent among female children as among males. Levinconcluded that sex, income of parents, age of child, disease status, and reoed caloric intake were tlle major predictors of nutritional status and that theth and nutrition beliefs of tile childrens' mothers contributed to the prediction:alooc intake. Concerning programmatic recommendations, he suggested thatIUse of large differences in economic position of the two groups "most interions which did not in some way augment real income would have a far greaterlive effect on the Jat child tllat on the Ramdasia" (1974:62).Thomas Marchione (in press) has recently studied factors related to dif

nt nutritional status of infants in a Jamaican community using data on therrelationships among economic, SGcial, arid cultural variables. Through factorlysis he was able to identify a series of significant variables, including a "nuclearIlly-solidarity" factor as well as "caretakermaturity" and "dependencyratio"tors. As in other recent studies, it was found that an infant is subjected to


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ural-subsistence-dependency" factor was a significant predictor as well, reflecting.e marginality and inadequacy of the small plots available to people for foodIltivation in the outlying areas.

Although Marchione's data leave a considerable portion of total variance un


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328 Modernization, Cultural Pluralism, and Health Care

a richer expression of this dimension into our predictive, theoretical frameworks.Sophisticated multifactor studies in nutrition and health can contribute sig.nificantly to general anthropological theory and to nutritional science; at the same

time, they can aid in solving some of the practical heal th and nutritional problemsof human communities. The point is that intracultural research strategies, focUSingon individuals and households as units of analysis, permit the specification of pre.dictive models by means of which "at-risk" subpopulations within communitiescan be identified. At the same time major barriers to the implementation of nutri.tional programs, counseling, and other efforts can be identified, as well as theplaces most responsive to intervention by well-informed community and regionaihealth efforts.

Anthropologists working in the areas of nutrition and food consumptionhave significant contributions to make, especially in connection with conceptual.izing, making operational and measuring the effect of social, economic, and cultural variables. After all, that is what we are supposedly trained to do best. Butsociocultural data will not advance multidisciplinary research unless we shaperesearch strategies and conceptual units to be in conjunction with the data andtheoretical constructs of our colleagues on the nutritional, biochemical side of theresearch enterprise. This paper is intended to further those research efforts.

1977 intracultural diversity and nutritional anthropology

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