Anne Allison “Japanese Mothers and Obentos”
by rida batool
1. Symbols of culture – are also ways people live their lives
2. Structures of Power
3. Ideological State Apparatuses – Althusser’s term for institutions that educate entertain, inform and in other ways produce ideas that indoctrinate people into a particular way of seeing the world
4. Japanese Food as Cultural Myth
5. Japanese culture says food should first look good (smallness, separation, fragmentation), and then taste good
6. Container is as important as what is contained
7. School, State, Subjectivity
8. Purpose of school is to shape children into proper (gender) roles. Lunchboxes are part of shaping proper gender roles.
9. Obedient to the well-trained and screened teachers means one is obedient to the state
10. Precision, balance
11. obentos: aesthetic of Japanese children’s school lunch boxes
12. Take planning
13. preparation time is interpreted by author as a form of ideological control
14. Preparation of Obentos
14.1. state over mothers to produce proper Japanese citizens
15. Naturalization of food
16. transformed from messy natural to aesthetic ‘natural’ of a different form (apples carved into roses)
17. Nursery School and Ideological Appropriation of the Obento
18. 1) Makes a child comfortable 2) Committed mothers 3) After 1st grade no more obentos
