A Contrastive Study On Chinese&Western Food Cultures From The Perspective Of Cultural Relativism

Food, as an essential prerequisite for human being existence, plays an important role no matter in east or west, in ancient times or modern times. It is irreplaceable to the development of society and the progress of the civilization of human society. But not all human beings have the same food or dietary habits, as old English saying "One man’s meat is another man’s poison". Everyone has different cognition about delicious food. In China we like to eat the viscera of the animals, not only because it is delicious, but also it is good for your health. For example, the liver is benefit to people’s sight. But to the westerners, the viscera are dirty, no matter in religious faith or the way to keep in good health. The westerners like animals more than we do, especially dogs. They take dogs as human being’s good friends and never eat dogs, which is very different from Chinese people.A man’s diet is not only restricted by a variety of the food that he can get, but also is restricted by his culture. Therefore, we are supposed to say that food is bound up with culture. And different people have different food cultures. Then what is the Food Culture? The term of Food Culture is a general concept, which involves natural science, social science and philosophy. It is also a category of culture, in which the narrow sense and broad sense of culture can be clarified and also be understood. People consider food culture as technology, science, thought, and philosophy in the process of the food raw materials’ development and utilization, food making and consumption. Therefore, we can also consider food culture as the sum of all varieties of food which is consist of the way, process and functions of people’s dietary production and life.The research about the Chinese and Western food cultures is sporadic, especially the contrastive study on Chinese and Western food cultures. So the author makes systematic comparisons about Chinese and Western diet cultures, and also proposed that the Chinese and western food cultures should be in harmony. The thesis was based on the theory "cultural relativism" which was proposed at the end of19th century and at the beginning of the20th century by Frans Boas, father of the anthropology. He advocated that there were various kinds of cultures in this world and people should not define all cultures just by taking some rules or principles as common standards. Because one value is always determined by one culture, and there is no such values that can transcend cultures. The writer emphasized on and analyzed the difference between Chinese and western food cultures with the theory of cultural relativism in this thesis. The writer also did comparative analysis and argument about concept, content and characteristics of foods in China and west. The main factors that cause the differences are also analyzed in the thesis, such as different agricultural foundations, different philosophies and different worldviews in order to unfold the causes in depth and then the author propose that with the development of cross-cultural communications, more factors for communications, interaction and compatibility between the two different food cultures will arise.