Dreaming of Robots and War without Humans

ancial concerns similar to those of working poor people, the consequences were much different for different socioeconomic classes. For Zenani’s family, their failure to pay bills may affect their access to food, but for the Davises, financial strain affected the maintenance of their lifestyle and pursuit of their dreams. The Davises’ socioeconomic status offers them more stability than the classes previously described and allows them to use food to describe their ideas and hopes for the future. These temporal ideas about food continue to be relevant in part IV in his work with upper-middle-class Black people. The upper-middle-class people Ewoodzie engaged with were often important members of the elite in Jackson, including a mayoral candidate. In his interactions with them, he was able to observe and ask about the role that food played in their daily lives and found stark differences from his previous experiences in the city. Food was something unquestionably present for the upper middle class, and its consumption signaled the expanded palette of the taster, depending on the food. Certain foods were portrayed as healthier, for example, and therefore more desirable. The presence of healthy foods was, in and of itself, a signal of the wealth available to this class of people, as restaurants catering to this dietary preference were available only in more prosperous neighborhoods. This is not to say that uppermiddle-class Black Americans in Jackson are completely divorced from the context of Black food as it is broadly understood in Jackson. Their privileged world was still heavily racialized, resulting in some pushback against a too-expansive palette, as that could be perceived as rejecting the individual’s Black roots. This socioeconomic class’s connection to food represents a different connection to Blackness, despite all the ways that Blackness itself shapes their experiences with society and with food. While there may appear to be unity under the banner of Blackness, and even being African American, this ethnography demonstrates the different ways that ideas of Blackness are understood and experienced by contemporary populations by examining barriers and access to certain products/foods. Ewoodzie’s own background testifies to this point. He makes it clear in his work that while he is phenotypically Black and is clearly recognized that way, he is not African American. Others’ perceptions of him as a Black man allowed him entrance into certain spaces (like male homeless shelters) that would not be accessible to others, but his Ghanaian background puts a slight barrier between him and his African American interlocutors. This makes him not an outsider but also not native to the area or idea of American Blackness, making this work an interesting example of what I call native-adjacent ethnography. This phenomenon may be unique to those who identify as members of a diaspora doing work in that same space, but as the number of scholars from diverse backgrounds increases, this may be something that both sociology and anthropology have to contend with more in the future. The advantages (and disadvantages) of native ethnography may be blurred in this case but seem to offer Ewoodzie some distance that allows him to analyze the unique ways that being African American and getting food are manifested in Jackson and gives participants the ability to speak to him as a Black man instead of a researcher. This book is incredibly well written and by making ethnography its focus incorporates a variety of perspectives that make it accessible to those outside sociology and to those broadly concerned with racial constructions of society. It demonstrates how ethnography can add a great deal to the understanding of class, race, and food, and how the three are blended, especially for Black people, in a way that localizes class and race. Ewoodzie’s analysis using distinct socioeconomic categories allows us to examine how, despite falling under the banner of Blackness, Black people experience the world differently in amanner that begs for further study. In the future, work building on Ewoodzie’s could examine the distinct relationships formed between Black and white people in the context of food. Getting Something to Eat in Jackson often hints at these relationships via descriptions of interracial interactions across social classes, such as when white service providers offered food to Black homeless men or when Black upper-middle-class candidates ate with white investors in their political campaign. These experiences demonstrate the way that class relationships and taste are further developed by the relationship that food has with power and racial hierarchies. Overall, this book demonstrates the potential of the social sciences to blend considerations of the individual with the larger structural limitations and advantages that affect different social groups.