Ebook Rice in the Filipino Diet and Culture
Food and culture, undoubtedly, are intimately related and mutually constitutive. It is often adduced that one can know a people by what they eat and by their methods of food preparation. Anthropologists have differing views on the relationship between food and culture (e.g. Douglas 1966; Goody 1982; Bourdieu 1984; Harris 1974). But the gamut of this relationship cannot be covered in this paper, which is focused primarily on rice. Still, a focus on rice may provide us with clues and insights on Filipino culture.
There is a matter-of-factness about rice so that celebrating 2004 as the international year of the rice does not grab the passion of many. Rice is so commonplace, why celebrate something ordinary, a crop at the center of episodes of social unrest but hardly ever at the center of national rituals? Or is rice somehow undergoing a social diminution or perhaps a profound transformation, such that we need to invent a tradition of celebrating it (cf. Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983)? At any event, this occasion provides us with the opportunity to step back and analyze an important aspect of our collective life.
This paper is concerned with a basic question: How central is rice to the Filipino, and what are its implications for understanding the way we approach and regard rice? In answering this question, I focus mainly on the structural position of Filipinos vis-à -vis rice. From that position, which for the present I argue is mainly that of consumer rather than producer, this paper explores certain cultural practices that may shed light on the role of rice in Filipino culture. These cultural practices have not been static, but have changed over time, which is to say that the centrality of rice has been changing. Inevitably, to understand the place of rice in our lives we need to contextualize rice in terms of its social history in the Philippines. Thus, the first part of the paper offers such a narrative which, given the constraints of time, can be done here only as a broad schema. The second part of the paper is preoccupied with a somewhat different concern. It analyzes quantitative data on recent trends in rice consumption. These numeral dataassist us in understanding the sociology of rice in the context of contemporary food practices of Filipinos. The nutrition aspect, however, is not discussed fully because I am not qualified in the topic. The third and final part of the paper offers reflections on the centrality of rice in Philippine culture. The overall story this paper tells about rice is not surprising—in some ways it harkens back to the ancient past, even as the meanings and the materiality of rice have changed considerably over the centuries, and continues to change and enter new and unprecedented social and technological terrains.
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