“Harvard Magazine” contributor Elizabeth Gudrias highlights the importance of artisanal cheeses in American culture. The dual definition of culture (cheese) and community identity inspires us to preserve and appreciate the importance of both.
Choose American artisanal cheeses
Ms Gudrias passes on information from Cowgirl Creamery, in Point Reyes Station, California, offering one typical message on its website: “In buying farmstead cheese rather than industrially produced cheese, you will support the fine art of farmstead cheesemaking,…help to ensure jobs in rural areas, and contribute to protecting farmlands from development.”
“This is one of the observations Heather Paxson, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, intends to present in the book she is writing this year (tentatively titled “Cheese Cultures”). Paxson—an associate professor of anthropology at MIT and the author of a 2004 book on Greek women’s changing attitudes toward family planning—specializes in the anthropology of the everyday: how individuals connect themselves to a web of social norms through their actions, and how those actions, en masse, shape the norms.”
Watch for Ms Paxson’s book in the future and here is a link to the article highlighting the importance of our American cheese cultures.
http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/01/anthropology-of-american-artisanal-cheese
