Yo ho ho! Why the bottle of rum?

Lauren Sutherland Senior Editor

It would be odd to see Captain Jack Sparrow kick back with a cup of tea, and the ubiquitous “Got a little Captain in you?’ slogan would not be as effective for advertising milk. In a lecture sponsored by the Anthropology Department entitled “Salt Pork and Rum in Belize: The Historical Connections between Global Capitalism and Modern Masculinity,” Indiana University Professor of Anthropology Richard Wilk will present the relationship between food, alcohol, masculinity and the expansion of capitalism in the context of pirate history.

An archeologist-turned-economic anthropologist, Wilk arrived at the study of pirate consumer culture via his interest in Belize as well as in the history of food. While living on the Caribbean island, Wilk uncovered the histories and habits of its former swashbuckling settlers. “I became interested in the origins of particular types of ‘extreme masculinity’ which originated among people like loggers, miners, fishermen and cowboys in the 18th and 19th centuries,” he said.

Wilks was invited to speak by Assistant Anthropology Professor Candace Lowe, who was a student and research assistant of Wilks’ while earning her Ph.D. at Indiana. Lowe invited her former advisor to campus to share his methods of the studying food culture. “[Wilk’s work] is not just symbolic analysis,” said Lowe. “It’s about food at the nutritional level, about consumer culture. It integrates economics and politics with a symbolic understanding of people’s practices in the [local and global] markets, the movement of goods from colonialism to present, and how this all influences the daily habits that we take for granted.”

“Salt Pork and Rum in Belize: The Historical Connections between Global Capitalism and Modern Masculinity” will be held Tuesday, April 10, from 7:30-8:30 pm. in Taylor Hall 203.