Geography of Food and Culture Glossary

Visceral Geographies

Experience place through the five senses.

Sense of Place

A place you have good feeling about and brings on nostalgia.

Topophilia

Love of place.

Dish

Ingredients put together in an organized way for human consumption; literally food on a plate.

Foodways

Everything surrounding the preparation, production, and consumption of food.

Food Taboos

Food that is forbidden to be eaten, usually due to religious restriction.

Cuisine

The generalized foods of a nation.

Geographic Scales

Levels which geographers use to study some sort of phenomena.

Injera

A pancake like bread, in the right hand and use it as a scoop to eat food from Ethiopia.

Cultural Regions

Regions defined by similarities in human activities, traditions, or cultural

attributions that can provide a sense of place.

Customs

Appellation d’Origine Contolee

A series of laws in France that guard the reputation of

agricultural regions that produce wine through government certification.

Herodotus

Paul Vidal De La Blanche

Microloans

This is a specific loan request to small businesses where donors are paid back as the

business grows and does better

Amphorae

Storage containers from Ancient Greece for food, wine, and for burying bodies.

Environmental Determinism

The outdated theory that the natural landscape was the sole

influencer in on humans

Aqueducts

Roman structures that transport water long distances to meet the needs of people

and agriculture in parts of the Roman empire where water supplies scarce.

Yakchāl

Domestication

Humans choosing plants and animal species to breed for human use, started

around 15,000 years ago in temperate valleys.

Einkorn

A type of wheat domesticated in Syria 9,000 BCE.

Irrigation

Diverting water from a water source to grow crops.

Fertile Crescent

Fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Ghee

Clarified butter made by boiling butter to evaporate the water so that milk solids are left

behind to be filtered.

Pakka

Foods made with ghee offered to the gods and then high ranking guests.

Pravarana

The end of the rainy season when Buddhist worshippers offer gifts to the monks,

invite them to a meal, and organize processions.

Lunar New Year

Festival of spring which is celebrated by a big gathering of family to share a

banquet and an altar where food is placed to honor the ancestors.

Torah

Sacred text of Judaism which are the five books of the Old Testament in the Christian

Bible.

Talmund

The authoritative body of Jewish tradition.

Bible

Sacred text of Christianity that include the Jewish Torah and the New Testament which

includes chapters of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection.

Koran

The sacred text of Islam which contains the words of Allah given to Muhammad by the

angel Gabriel

Communion

Yin

The underworld

Yang

Heaven and the visible world

Vedas

Sacred Hindu texts which are four volumes of the collective wisdom on how Hindus

must live.

Taoism

A belief system that provides the needs and healing of the sick and is a basis for

regulating festivals.

Terroir

Basically includes everything with the production of the foods of a region including the

landscape, soil, climate, and human manipulation.

Medicine bundles

Small bags of herbs, feathers, or symbols worn by Plains Indians to protect

against evil forces that may cause disharmony.

Federal Reservation

Lands held in trust for Native Americans by the US government.

Red Caviar

Salmon eggs that are dried in the sun into chewy strips.

Beringia

A subcontinent that connected modern day Siberia to modern day Alaska.

Indian Self-Determination Education Act of 1975

Enacted to promote Native American participation in government and education.

John Cabot

Jaques Cartier

New France

Treaty of Paris

Anadromous Fish

Canadian bacon

Scunchions