The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 26

j.a.panese parents-to-be might still consult an ekisha (a sort of fortune teller) in order to choose the proper name for a newborn infant, already thinking about the marriage (names should fit in order to ensure harmony); others will have difficulty in understanding the similarity between choosing a name and the observance of agricultural cycles, as both were religiously encoded in minute rules centuries ago. These people will even cringe at the discourse in a monastery where the priest might indulge in the discussion of the unity between inner order (of the individual) and outer order. The fact that mandala, traded all over the world, once represented that order escapes their personal experience.

Religions distinguished between nature and cosmos. Whether explicitly stated or not, nature was seen as earthbound, the source of our existence, the provider. Cosmos, beyond our reach, should not be interfered with. The experience of extraterrestrial research expanded the notion of nature. In today's integrated world, resources and environmental concerns also contribute to the expanded notion of nature pertinent to our activity and life. Our worries about pollution of earth, oceans, and skies are not religious in nature. Neither is the distinction between what is feasible and what is desirable. The Ten Commandments tell us what we should not do, while the devil called desire whispers into our ears that nothing is forbidden unless we really do not care for it. The relation between the wholeness of the being and its parts is subject to maintenance, just as the automobile is. Once G.o.ds were described as jealous and intolerant. Now they are presented as accommodating a world of diversified experiences and heterogeneous forms of wors.h.i.+p, including Satanism. Our pragmatic context is one of generalized pluralism, embodied in the many choices we pursue in the practical experience of self-const.i.tution. When the pragmatics of self-const.i.tution can be based on rationality, the churches of the civilization of illiteracy are houses of secular religion.

A Mouthful of Microwave Diet

Have you ever ordered a pizza over the Internet? It is an experience in illiterate cooking. The image on the screen allows clients to prepare the most individualized pizza one can think of: they decide what the shape, size, and thickness of the crust will be; which spices and how much; what kind of cheese; and which toppings. They can arrange these the way they want, layer them, and control how much tomato sauce, if any, should be used.

Done? Ask your children, or your guests, whether they want to correct your design. The on-line chef is open to suggestions. All set? The pizza will be delivered in 20 minutes-or it's free. The entire transaction is illiterate: selection is made by clicking an image. With each choice, prices are automatically calculated and listed. Addition is as error-free as it can get. Taxes are calculated and automatically transferred to the IRS. A voice announces over the Internet, "Food is ready! Thank you for your order. And please visit us again."

No, this is not fantasy. Pizza shops and hamburger joints figure visibly on the Internet (still in its infancy). Their structure and functioning, as well as the expectations connected to them, are what defines them as belonging to the civilization of illiteracy. But the picture of what people eat and how their food is prepared is more complicated than what this example conveys. This chapter will describe how we arrived at this point, and what the consequences of the fundamental s.h.i.+ft from the civilization of literacy in our relation to food are.

Food and expectations

How does one connect food to literacy? In the first place, how we eat is as important as what we eat and how we prepare it. There is a culture of dining, and an entire way of viewing food-from obtaining raw ingredients to preparation and to eating-that reflects values instilled in the civilization of literacy. Food and eating in the civilization of illiteracy are epitomized not only by the pizza outlet on the Internet, by McDonalds, Burger King, and the frozen dinner waiting to be thrown into the microwave oven, but also by the vast industry of efficient production of primary and secondary foodstuffs, the anonymous, segmented processing of nutrition. It is not an individual's literacy that characterizes the meal, but the pragmatic framework in which people emerge and how they project their characteristics, including dietary and taste expectations, in the process.

The hunger-driven primitive human and the spoiled patron of a good Italian restaurant have in common only the biological substratum of their need, expressed in the very dissimilar acts of hunting and, respectively, selecting items from a menu.

Primitive beings are identified by projecting, in the universe of their existence, natural qualities pertinent to the experience of feeding themselves: sight, hearing, smell, speed, force.

Restaurant patrons project natural abilities filtered through a culture of eating: taste, dietary awareness, ability to select and combine. These two extremes doc.u.ment a commonalty of human self-const.i.tution. Nevertheless, what is of interest in the attempt to understand food and eating in the civilization of illiteracy are actually differences. The nuclei of ancient incipient agriculture, which were also the places of origin for many language families, are distinct pragmatic frameworks relevant also to the experience of cooking. Within agriculture, absolute dependencies on nature are changed to relative dependencies, since more food is produced than is needed for survival. The food of this period is cause for some of the rituals a.s.sociated with the elements involved in producing it.

The layers between animal hunger and the new hunger, filter new experiences of satisfaction or illness, of pleasure or pain, of self-control or abuse. Symbolism (concerning fertility, agriculture, power) confirms patterns of successful or failed practical experiences against the background of increased awareness of the biological characteristics of the species.

Notation and writing contribute to the change of balance between the natural and the cultural. But the difference between the primitive eater and the person who awaits his dinner at a table derives from the distinctive conditions of their existence.

In the pragmatic framework that const.i.tutes the foundation for literacy, expectations regarding food were already in place: slow rhythm, awareness of the environment, environment and natural cycles, labor division according to s.e.x and age (the female was usually the homemaker and cook). Food preparation was characterized by its intrinsic sequentiality, by linear dependencies among its variables. Cooking was inspired and supported by the sequence of seasons, local stock, and relative immediacy of needs, affected by weather conditions, intensity of effort, and celebration pertinent to seasons or special events.

In short, the relation to food was governed by the same principles that notation and writing were.

In the civilization of illiteracy, personal att.i.tudes towards preparing food and eating, whether at home or in a restaurant, are affected by a different pragmatic framework. Probably more is known about food in the civilization of illiteracy than at any other time in the history of agriculture and cuisine. But this knowledge does not come from the direct experience of the food, i.e., how it is grown and processed. Human beings in the civilization of illiteracy know better why they eat than what they eat. It is not what is in the food that concerns many people, but what the food is supposed to do for them: maintain and service the body through the proper balance of vitamins, minerals, and protein; help people cope with residue; and, eventually, conjure meaning as a symbol in a universe of competing symbolisms. Fas.h.i.+on extends to food, too!

People feed themselves today according to expectations different from those of primitive human beings-hunters, farmers, craftsmen, and workers involved in pre- industrial experience.

Needs are different, and food resources are different. Many layers of humanity stand between an individual projecting animal hunger in a world of competing animals and an individual expressing desire for French cuisine, in its authentic variations, in its sn.o.bbish form, or in its fast food versions, fresh or frozen, regular or dietetic. Pizza, spaghetti, falafel, sus.h.i.+, tortillas, cold cuts, and egg rolls figure no less on the list of choices. Many filters, in the form of various taboos and restrictions, as well as personal tastes, are at work. Meaning is incidentally elicited as one chooses the recipe of a celebrity cook, or decides on a certain restaurant.

The hungry primitive human, the human beings working the land in the agricultural phase, the farmers, craftsmen, soldiers, and scholars of the pre-industrial age expected only that food would still their hunger. More is expected from the eating experience today, and some of these expectations have nothing to do with hunger. People take it for granted that they can buy any type of food from anywhere in the world, at any time of the year.

Globality is thus acknowledged, just as the sequence of seasons is ignored. In between these two extremes is the literate eating experience, with its own expectations.

The experience of eating reflected a way of life, a way of self-const.i.tution as civilized, progressive, literate. Here are the words of Charles d.i.c.kens, recorded during his visit to the United States in 1842. He gave a vivid summary of American eating habits west of the big eastern cities (Boston, New York) as he observed them on steamboats and in inns where stagecoaches stopped for the night in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri. I never in my life did see such listless, heavy dulness [sic] as brooded over these meals: the very recollection of it weighs me down, and makes me, for the moment, wretched. Reading and writing on my knee, in our little cabin, I really dreaded the coming of the hour that summoned us to table; and was as glad to escape from it again as if it had been a penance or a punishment. Healthy cheerfulness and good spirits forming part of the banquet, I could soak my crusts in the fountain with Le Sage's strolling players, and revel in their glad enjoyment: but sitting down with so many fellow-animals to ward off thirst and hunger as a business; to empty each creature his Yahoo's trough as quickly as he can, and then to slink sullenly away; to have these social sacraments stripped of everything but the mere greedy satisfaction of the natural cravings; goes so against the grain with me, that I seriously believe the recollection of these funeral feasts will be a waking nightmare to me all my life. d.i.c.kens was the epitome of the literate experience, and he was addressing a literate audience that had literate expectations in the experience of dining: what time meals were held, who sat where and next to whom, the order in which certain foods were served, how long a meal should last, what topics could be discussed. Literate characteristics persist in the literate frameworks of political and formal dinners: hierarchy (who sits where), the order in which food is presented, the types of dishes and eating utensils.

Fis.h.i.+ng in a videolake

Many questions come to mind with respect to how, and what, and when, people eat and drink. Human beings still project their reality in the environment through biological characteristics-the ability to see, smell, taste, move, jump, etc.-but some in unnatural ways. Not only do we help vision with gla.s.ses and hearing with aid devices, but even taste and smell are helped through the appropriate chemistry, in order to buffer some odor and enhance others. From odorless garlic to tofu smelling of pork chops, everything is within the possibility of biochemistry. At the extreme, nutrition is altogether removed from the context of nature. This is the case not just with people who are fed artificially, through tubes, pills, or special concoctions.

What does this have to do with literacy? How is it influenced, if at all, by the increased illiteracy of the new condition of human activity? The answers are far from being trivial. An editorialist from Germany, a country of solid, if not necessarily refined, eating instincts, went to great lengths to explain the alienation of nourishment in our age. The final scene he described is comic and sad at the same time. Some artificially obtained nutritive substance, molded in the shape of fish, is fried and served to a video- literate who eats the food while watching a videotape about fis.h.i.+ng. The ersatz experience of tele-viewing is probably disconnected from the experience of river, trees, suns.h.i.+ne, and fish biting the hook, not to mention the taste of fresh fish. Dwindling stocks of fish is one reason why we can no longer afford the nourishment that results from direct involvement with nature. Not everyone can or wants to be a hunter, a fisherman, or a farmer. The romanticism of literacy, and of the utopian ideologies it helps express, would lead some to believe that this is possible, even desirable. But maybe not, since the new scale of humankind does not go unnoticed, even by those still clinging to the continuity and permanency embodied in literacy.

Values, rules, and expectations such as health considerations, efficiency, and taste are embodied in programs and procedures for which machines are built, new substances designed, and waste reprocessed. It might make some people s.h.i.+ver, but about 50% of a person's average caloric intake is the result of artificial synthesis and genetic engineering. Louis de Funs (in a 1976 French film directed by Claude Zidi) almost wound up as part of the food processed at Tricatel, a new factory that produces tasteless food based on the rules and looks of French cuisine, which the factory effectively undermines. The comedian, performing as a food inspector, has to decide what the real thing is and what is the fake. Competing with this burlesque, a national program, Awakening of Taste, under the aegis of the Minister of Culture, was set up to encourage French students in primary schools to rediscover the true national cuisine. That such a program parallels the effort of the Acadmie Franaise to maintain the purity and integrity of the language is a convenient argument concerning the interdependence of the ideal of literacy and that of haute cuisine.

The movie satirizes the human being's relation to food and technology. Eating something reminiscent of a fish, whether farmed or synthetically produced, while having video nostalgia for fis.h.i.+ng is not an exception. In the mental gardens we plant each spring, when magazines and television shows present images of the beautiful tomatoes we might enjoy in a few months, there is a virtual s.p.a.ce for every practical experience we gave up in order to satisfy our desire for more at the lowest price. The tomato in the civilization of illiteracy, hydroponic or garden grown, ripens faster, is perfect in form, and tastes almost like we think it should.

Irony and science fiction aside, we are indeed engineering proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. They are designed to optimally maintain the human being and enhance his or her performance. This can be seen as a new phase in the process of transferring knowledge pertinent to nourishment from the encompa.s.sing and dominating medium of literacy to the many partial literacies- chemical, biological, genetic-of the civilization of illiteracy. Having in mind the image of where we currently stand and the direction in which we are heading, we can trace human self-const.i.tution with the practical experience of food.

Language and nourishment

The relation between what people eat, how they prepare their food, how they serve and how they eat it, is accounted for in language, especially in its literate use, in many ways.

Experiences of our continuous const.i.tution through work, personal life, habits, defense, and aggression are expressed through language and other manifestations of our nature and culture. The same holds true for such peculiarities as the way people eat, entertain, dress, make love, and play. Language, as one among many expressive means, is a medium for representation, but also for diversifying experiences. It supports the research of new realms of existence, and partic.i.p.ates in the maintenance of the integrity of human interdependencies as they develop in work, leisure, and meditation.

When the question "Why are there fewer alcoholics in China, Korea, j.a.pan, and India?" was asked, answers were sought in culture. Reformulated as "Why can't Asians tolerate alcohol?"

the question s.h.i.+fted the focus from what we do or do not do- the filters of exclusion or preference-to biology. Environmental, cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive characteristics can be acknowledged once the biological substratum is brought to light. Many people of Asian origin display an intolerance to alcohol that is due to a metabolism peculiar to their race. The intolerance to alcohol is a.s.sociated with the lack of a catalytic enzyme, which under normal circ.u.mstances does not affect the functioning of the body. Only when alcohol is consumed do unpleasant symptoms appear: the face becomes flushed, skin temperature rises, the pulse quickens. Europeans, black Africans, and North American Indians are not affected in the same way. But they are subject to other genetically determined food sensitivities. For example, lactose intolerance is highest in Blacks.

The example given above tells us that the projection of biological characteristics into the universe of people's existence results in the image of differences among various groups of people and among individuals. People noticed these peculiarities before science existed in order to explain them.

Relating the effect to a cause-a certain food or drink-people incorporate this relation into their body of experiences.

Established connections become rules that are intended to ensure optimal individual and group functioning. Rules pertaining to food and ways of eating were eventually encoded and transmitted through literate means.

In short, patterns of work and life are affected. They point to various levels at which human practical experiences and the experience of nourishment are interconditioned. A first level regards nourishment and our biological endowment. A second level is nourishment and the environment-what we can afford from the world surrounding us. A third level is nourishment and self-consciousness-what best suits our life and work. Over time the interdependency changes. And at moments when the scale of mankind reaches a threshold, it is drastically redefined-as in our times, for instance.

On a larger scale, food- and drinking-related instances prompt vast servicing activities and the establishment of networks of distributed tasks. Today, diet engineers, caterers, geneticists, nutritionists, are set up to provide whatever fits the occasion, the guest list, dietary prescriptions, and astrological or medical recommendations. A formal dinner can become a well mediated activity, with many prefabricated components, including table manners-if the commissioning party so desires. a.s.sociated or not to the menu, a preparatory seminar in what to wear, how to use utensils (if more than plastic spoons and knives are used), what kind of conversation with the entre, and which jokes before, or after, or instead of the wine, educates for the event.

In fact, the buffet, a configuration from which each can a.s.semble his or her menu, not unlike the on-line order form for the Internet pizza, is more and more preferred. It is less confining than the literacy-based sequence of the three-course meals-structured as introduction, thesis, and conclusion, known under the labels appetizer, main entre, dessert.

Sequence and configuration revisited

With writing and reading, the experience of feeding oneself and one's family expanded to partaking in the experience of food preservation and sharing. French a.s.syriologist Jean Bottero read recipes, in cuneiform writing on clay tablets from around 1700 BCE, for food cooked at important occasions for people in power.

That this was "cuisine of striking richness, refinement, sophistication, and artistry" should not necessarily impress us here. But the description of the ingredients, some no longer known or in use, of the sequence, and the context (celebration) deserve attention: "Head, legs and tail should be singed. Take the meat. Bring water to boil. Add fat. Onions, samidu, leeks, garlic, some blood, some fresh cheese, the whole beaten together. Add an equal amount of plain suhutium." This is a stew of kid, a meal for an exceptional occasion.

The pragmatic framework that made this cooking possible also made writing possible and necessary. Over time, this connection became even closer. Between the experiences of language and that of eating and drinking, a continuum of interactions can be noticed. Language distinctions pertinent to the practical experience of cultivating plants, taking care of animals, processing milk, and seasoning food expanded from satisfying needs to creating desires a.s.sociated with taste. New knowledge is stimulated by experiences different from nourishment, such as new forms of work (cooking included), use of new resources, new tools, and new skills. And so is the expression of logic in the act of preparing, serving, and eating the food. On reading a book of recipes from the Tiberian era of the Roman Empire-De Re Culinaria (The Art of Cooking, attributed to Gaelius Apicius) and De Re Rustica (by Cato)-one can discern how things have changed over 1600 years. Apicius expressed many distinctions in foods and in ways of cooking and eating. He also expressed a certain concern for health. "Digging one's grave with one's teeth," as the expression came to life in connection with gluttony (crisp tongues of larks, dormice marinated in honey, tasty thighs of ostrich are listed), was replaced by elaborate recipes to relieve an upset stomach or to facilitate digestion.

The books do not say what everyone ate, and there are reasons to believe that there was quite a difference between the menu of slaves and that of their owners. Advances in identifying plants and in processing food go in tandem with advances in medicine.

Writings from other parts of the world, especially China, testify to similar developments.

It was already remarked, by no other than Roland Barthes, that the two basic language systems-one based on ideographic writing, the second on the phonetic convention-put their characteristic stamp on the menus of the Far Eastern and Western civilizations.

A j.a.panese menu is an expression of a configuration. One can start with any of the dishes offered simultaneously. Combinations are allowed. Eating is part of the j.a.panese culture, a practical experience of self-const.i.tution with strong visual components, refined combinations of odors, and partic.i.p.ation of almost all senses. It also reflects the awareness of the world in which the j.a.panese const.i.tute themselves. j.a.panese food is focused on what life on an island affords, plus/minus influences from other cultures, resulting from the mobility of peoples. The more concrete writing system of the Far East and the more down-to-earth nourishment, i.e., the closeness to what each source of nutrition is (raw fish, seaweed, rice, minimal processing, strict dietary patterns based on combinations of nutritional ideograms), are an expression of the unity of the pragmatic framework within which they result.

A Western menu is a sequence, a one-directional linear event with a precise culmination. Eating proceeds from the introduction to the conclusion, "from soup to nuts." A meal has a progression and projects expectations a.s.sociated with this progression. Within the language of our food, there are well formed sentences and ill- formed sentences, as well as a general tendency experience gastronomic pleasure. A literate society is a society aware of the rules for generating and enjoying meals according to such rules. The rules are based on experiences transmitted from one generation to the next, not necessarily in written form, but reflecting the intrinsic sequentiality of language and its abstract writing system. Goethe fired his cook (Lina Louise Axthelm) because she could not realize the distinction between healthy meals and the more sophisticated art of preparing them according to rules of literacy and aesthetic distinction.

On cooks, pots, and spoons

Cooking food-a practical experience that followed catching prey-represents an important moment in human self-definition. As a form of praxis, it parallels the experience of self-const.i.tution through language. It extends, as language does, far beyond satisfying immediate needs, allowing for the establishment of expectations above and beyond survival. Cooking implies generality, but also integrates elements of individuality. Some foods taste better, are more easily digested, support specific practical experiences. For example, some foods enhance prowess. When eaten before a hunt, they can trigger l.u.s.t for chasing the animal. Some foods stimulate s.e.xual drive, others induce states of hallucination. Cooking was, in many ways, a journey from the known into the unknown. Together with the sensorial experience, intellectual elements were involved in the process. They are observations, of similarities and dissimilarities of certain procedures, of substances used, of the influence of weather, season, tools, etc.; simple inferences, discoveries-the effect of fire, salt, spices. The experience of preparing food, together with many other practical experiences on which it depends or which are connected to it, opens avenues of abstraction. Cooking improves the quality of individual life, and thus empowers members of a community to better adapt to pragmatic expectations.

The const.i.tution of the notion of food quality, as an abstraction of taste, and crafting of tools appropriate to the activity, is of special interest. An example: Pottery, in the natural context where it was possible, became the medium for preserving and cooking. In other contexts, carved stone, carved wood, woven branches, or metal was used, for storing or for cooking, according to the material. Progressively, tools for preparing and tools for eating were crafted, and new eating habits were acknowledged. When the multiple interdependency food-container-cooking-preservation was internalized in the activity of preparing food, a framework for new experiences was established. Some of these experiences, such as how to handle fire, transcend nourishment. The significance of this process can be succinctly expressed: cooked food, which we need to a.s.sociate to the tools used, is food taken out of the context of nature and introduced in the context of culture. The experience of cooking involves other experiences and then expands into other domains unrelated to nourishment. This experience requires instruments for cooking, but even more an understanding of the process involved, of the effects of combinations and additions, and a strategy for delivery to those for whom cooking was undertaken.

Satisfying hunger in the fight for survival is an individual experience. Preparation of food requires time. In the experience of achieving time awareness, cooking played a role not to be ignored. If time can be used for different purposes by different people, a.s.sociated in view of shared goals, then some can tend to the need of prepared food for others, while in turn partaking in their effort of hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, agriculture, and craftsmans.h.i.+p. It was a simple strategy of labor a.s.signments, affected by tribal life, family, rituals, myth, and religion: knowledge gained in preparing food disseminated without the need for specialized activity. But once pragmatic circ.u.mstances of life required it, some people a.s.sumed the function and thus, once a critical ma.s.s of efficiency was reached, what we today call the cook was identified. From the not-too- many written recipes that come down to us through the centuries, as well as from religious writings containing precise, pragmatically motivated restrictions, we learn enough about the stabilizing role of writing upon food preparation. We also gain understanding of the new functions played by food preparation: celebration of events, sacrifice to G.o.ds, expression of power.

People learn to cook and to eat at the same time. In this process, they come to share values beyond the immediacy of plants, fruits, and a piece of meat. Mediations pertinent to the art of cooking and eating are also part of the language process and become language. Culinary restrictions, such as those set down in some religions, are but an example of this process. They encode practical rules related to survival and well- being, but also to some conventions beyond the physical reality of the food.

Language makes such rules the rules of the community; writing preserves them as requirements and thus exercises an important normative role.

Each pragmatic context determined what was acceptable as food and the conditions of food preparation, henceforth the condition of cooks and their particular role in social life. Many cooks, serving at courts of royalty, in monasteries, in the military, became the object of folk tales, fiction, of philosophers'

comments. No cook seems to have been highly educated, but all their clients tried to impress through the food served and the wines, or other drinks, accompanying them. In such circ.u.mstances, the symbolic function of food indeed takes over the primary function of satisfying hunger. Thus the cook, like the singer and the dancer and the poet, contributes his part to what becomes the art of living. It is probably worth pointing out that memory devices similar to those used by poets and musicians are used by cooks, and that improvisation in preparing a meal plays an important part.

Writing entered the kitchen; and some of the last to resist literacy, when it became a pragmatic requirement, were those who cooked for others. Orality is more stubborn, for many reasons, when it involves the secrecy of food preparation. There are good reasons for this, some obvious even in our day of cracking the most guarded secrets. Indeed, labor division does not stop at the gates of factories. The segmentation of life and labor, increased mediation, and expectations of high efficiency make ma.s.s production possible. Almost everything people need to feed themselves, in order to maintain their physical and mental productive powers with a minimum of investment, is provided in favor of productive cycles. In the pragmatic framework of the industrial age, this meant the reproduction of the productive forces of the worker in a context of permanency. The investment in education and training was to be recuperated over a lifetime of work. Nourishment contributed to the same pattern: the family adapted to the rhythms of the practical experience of industry related jobs.

At work, at home, in school, at church, and last but not least in nourishment, acceptance of authority together with the discipline of self-denial were at work. That literacy, through its own structural characteristics (hierarchy, authority, standardization) accentuated all these peculiarities should at this time be evident. On special occasions, accounted for in the overall efficiency of effort, nourishment became celebration. It was integrated in the calendar of events through which authority was acknowledged: Sabbath, religious holidays, and political celebrations were motives for a better, or at least different, menu. Other days were meant to raise the awareness of self-denial (fish on Friday, for instance).

The cook did not necessarily become a literate person, but he or she was a product of the literate environment of practical experiences of pre-industrial and industrial societies. The tools and the culture of spices, ingredients, matching food and dishes, of expressing social status in the dinnerware set out, and the meal, i.e., the structure of the entire statement which a meal const.i.tutes were all subjected to literacy. Labor division made the cook necessary, while simultaneously generating an industrial culture of food. In the equation of the labor market in industrial society, with literacy as its underlying structure, eating equals maintenance of productive and reproductive power. It also means the reproduction of needs at an increasing scale, as well as their change from needs to desires triggering the expansion of industrial production.

In the expectations a.s.sociated with food there is more than only the voice of hunger. Our system of values, as it was articulated in the literate use of language, is expressed in our hunger, and in our particular ways to satisfy it. Based on this observation, we acknowledge that all the forces at work in structuring democratic social relations also affect the socialization of our nourishment. Uniform quality, and access to this common denominator quality, are introduced in the market, and with them the possibility of stating and maintaining health standards.

Within the boundaries of the civilization of literacy and its a.s.sociated hygiene and health standards, there is little left that can be identified with the country home that cannot be industrialized and made uniformly available. Beyond these boundaries starts a new reality of expectations, of transcended needs, and of technological means to satisfy them within standards of quality that reinforce the notion of democracy.