Weiss, Brad
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In my research I have undertaken a number of different ethnographic and historical projects, from a study of urban Tanzanian popular culture, to work on heritage breed pig production and consumption in the United States.
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Publication Open Access Thug Realism: Inhabiting Fantasy in Urban Tanzania(American Anthropological Association, 2002-02-01) Weiss, BradExcerpt from publication: "One of the more compelling developments in contemporary sociocultural anthropology is it's increasing attention to 'the imagination'…Publication Open Access On the Evanescent and Reminiscent(Sensate: A Journal for Experiments in Critical Media Practice, 2012-06-01) Weiss, BradIn classic accounts, taste is dismissed as a “proximal sense,” too brutish to admit of refinement; and yet the term “taste” is also a synecdoche of aesthetic judgment itself. These contrasts inform this paper, which illustrates their expression in ethnographic particulars drawn from my research on pasture-raised pork in North Carolina. My intention is not to demonstrate what taste really is, but to ask how the multidimensionality of taste is realized in practice. This inquiry might further illuminate the connection between human perception and systems of value.Publication Open Access Northwestern Tanzania on a Single Shilling: Sociality, Embodiment, Valuation(American Anthropological Association, 1997-08-01) Weiss, BradThe process of fermenting banana juice and ground millet into banana beer is an elaborate craft, practiced and appreciated by Haya men. As is the case in many African communities where the plenitude and desirability of beer is intimately connected with, if not indistinguishable from, the establishment and vigor of sociality itself, Haya brewers and drinkers are scrupulously attentive to the details of this often lengthy procedure (Carlson 1989; Karp 1980; Taylor 1991).' Many told me of their concern that jealous neighbors or sorcerers (often one and the same in Haya neighborhoods) would spoil their efforts by pouring kerosene into the frothy mixture during the night. But Haya evaluations of the fine points of the brewing process are by no means limited to anxious attempts to safeguard their valuable libations; there is, in fact, what can best be described as an aesthetic of beer production, and it is the demands of this aesthetic that dictate a careful and precise techniquePublication Open Access Eating Ursula(University of California Press, 2014-01-01) Weiss, BradThis paper examines issues surrounding the values of farmers, consumers, chefs, and other food activists who are working to expand the production and consumption of pastured pork in central North Carolina (a region known as the Piedmont). What I try to demonstrate in this paper are the ways that an ‘‘ethics of care’’ (Heath and Meneley 2010) is often articulated in terms of the cultural categories of ‘‘connection’’ and ‘‘authenticity.’’ These consciously expressed categories are shown to undergird a range of commitments, from concerns about animal welfare, to support for ‘‘local’’ economies, to parental care for children. My discussion considers the relationships among the lives of animals and the meat they yield, as well as the craft that brings about that transformation, and shows how the ethical questions embedded in these relationships and processes depend upon a wider set of cultural practices and values that are pressing concerns in our larger economy and society. I further consider how examining everyday understandings of ‘‘connection’’ and ‘‘authenticity,’’ as revealed in ethnographic work with farmers, consumers, restaurateurs, and other food activists in the Piedmont, can highlight certain tensions within this ‘‘ethics of care’’—such as tensions about food taboos and certification processes—that speak to the politics of food activism in the region and elsewhere.Publication Open Access Making Pigs Local: Discerning the Sensory Character of Place(American Anthropological Association, 2011-07-01) Weiss, BradThis article offers an attempt to characterize the relationship between “taste” and “place” as cultivated and embodied in the production, circulation, and consumption of pasture‐raised pork. I focus on the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and offer ethnographic evidence drawn from working with farmers, chefs and restaurant workers, as well as consumers at farmers’ markets to give substance to these discussions. The argument problematizes the category of “local food,” to interrogate the very notion of “place” and its many “tastes” (and other experiential qualities) with respect to the remaking and remapping of food production in the Piedmont. “Local food” is widely celebrated in this region, and pastured pork is a critical index of this “locality”; but here I ask how place itself is constituted, assigned concrete, experiential qualities, and so grasped in social practice. More than an attempt to specify the qualities of “the local” and their relationship with regional foodways, this article is concerned with the process that Lefebvre calls “the production of space.”Publication Open Access Opening Access: Publics, Publication, and a Path to Inclusion(American Anthropological Association, 2014-01-01) Weiss, BradExcerpt from publication: "For many years, members of the Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA),as well as our executive board and editors, have been interested in pursuing anopen-access option for our flagship publication,Cultural Anthropology…"Publication Open Access The Dream of the Green Hog Revolution(Sapiens, 2018-11-08) Weiss, Brad; Arts & SciencesThroughout North Carolina, more and more farmers are choosing to raise free-range pigs and sell pasture-fed pork. Will that solve the problems caused by industrial meat production? Published URL: https://www.sapiens.org/culture/north-carolina-hogs/Publication Open Access Open Access and the Transformation of Academic Publishing: A View from Cultural Anthropology(Social Science Research Council, 2016-09-20) Weiss, Brad; Arts & SciencesOne vital point that advocates of open access must make clear: open access does not mean that publication is free. Published URL: https://items.ssrc.org/parameters/open-access-and-the-transformation-of-academic-publishing-a-view-from-cultural-anthropology/Publication Open Access Afterword: Thinking, and Becoming, Beyond Terroir(2025) Paxson, Heather; Weiss, Brad; Arts & SciencesThe discipline of anthropology has long grappled with the challenge of developing theoretical forms while simultaneously grounding these concepts in concrete phenomena. Is kinship, for example, an empirically observable domain of human life; one model of relationship-making; or an ideological claim, only present in specific times and places, about the value of shared “blood” or genetic inheritance? Are rituals the ceremonial practices by which humans punctuate a collective temporal order, the communicative dimension of all social activity, or merely the artifact of utilitarian models of cultural life (that is to say, what remains after all “practical” activity has been accounted for can only be a “ritual”)? The notion of terroir, glossed as “the taste of place,” presents a similar conundrum. Is terroir best understood as a very specific attribute of viticultural performance; a cultural category of perception (perhaps one developed to evaluate precisely said viticultural qualities); or a framework for articulating the material connection between histories, modes, and techniques of food production and the communities of consumers who appreciate these goods?Publication Open Access Cuisine of economy, cuisine of excess: materializing value in culinary practice(Royal Anthropological Institute, 2022-09-17) Weiss, Brad; Arts & SciencesCertain culinary practices are often interpreted as evidence of ‘economizing’ (a frugal use of available resources) or of ‘excess’ (a celebratory expenditure of resources for symbolic purposes). This article uses these categories as a way to interrogate analytical assumptions about materialism more generally. Drawing on ethnographic research from both rural Tanzania, and the contemporary suburban United States, it argues that various qualities of discernment, taste, and preference are not determined by the material affordances of foods, but rather that these judgements can be materialized in social and cultural practice.