Anthropology of
Agave and Mezcal

6-Week Online Course
April 27, 2026

Agave and mezcal as living biocultural worlds — where land, bodies, knowledge, and power meet.

Let’s bring social studies to
food and beverage!

This course brings anthropological depth to the world of agave and mezcal, inviting participants to look beyond production techniques and tasting notes, and into the social, ecological, and political processes that shape them.

Drawing from food anthropology and agroecology, we explore how agave management and mezcal practices are woven through narratives, bodies, institutions, markets, territories, and ecosystems. Mezcal is approached not only as a beverage, but as a living social process embedded in everyday life.

Mezcal, as food and culture, sits at the crossroads of some of the most pressing issues of our time: social inequalities, land use change, migration, health, urbanization, rural ways of life, and the future of traditional knowledge.

Through ethnographic perspectives and critical discussion, the course offers tools to better understand the worlds that produce mezcal — and the worlds mezcal, in turn, helps to produce.

What you’ll learn

Understand mezcal as a biocultural system, shaped by land, labor, bodies, rituals, and political economies.

Identify how narratives, markets, and institutions transform food and drink, and how communities respond to those forces.

Strategies to recognize hegemonic narratives and methods to reframe systems of values.

Develop a critical lens to engage food and beverage beyond tasting, grounding appreciation in social, ecological, and ethical context.

Who is it for?

This workshop is for people who work with food, territory, culture, or education and want to engage with mezcal beyond technical, commercial, or folkloric views.

It is especially relevant for cooks, researchers, students, educators, community organizers, agriculturists, and anyone seeking critical and shared perspectives on food systems.

Syllabus

    • Brief history of anthropology

    • About ethnography

    • Principles of anthropology

    • Anthropology or Intercultural studies

    • Food studies

    • Understanding agave and mezcal throuhg a cultural perspective

    • Cosmovision, and creation of meanings

    • Psychosociology of food

    • Cases of study

    • Transmission of knowledge

    • Cultural reproduction and resistancen text goes here

    • About the human body, the senses and taste

    • Historic taste

    • Construction of flavor and identity

    • Case studies

    • Agave biodiversity

    • TEK: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Agave

    • Local classifications of agave

    • Industrialization and capitalism concerning agave and mezcal

    • TEK and restoration

    • Traditional societies and agave peasants

    • Gender in mezcal

    • Geographical indications

    • Market systems and logistics

    • Intercultural practices for dialogue

    • Translocal solidarities

    • Representing with dignity

    • La memoria biocultural, Víctor Toledo y Narciso Barrera

    • Towards a Psychosociology of Food, Roland Barthes

    • Comida, cultura y modernidad en México. Perspectivas antropológicas e históricas, Catherine Good y Laura Elena Corona

    • El maguey y el pulque en los códices mexicanos, Oswaldo Goncalves de Lima

    • Etnoecología ixcateca, Selene Rangel

    • Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu

    • Hacia una reflexión decolonial de la alimentación en el occidente de México, Yanga Villagómez, Claudio Rocío Magaña

    • Cuerpo, cosmos y medio ambiente de Pierre Beaucage

    • Taste of place, Amy Trubek

    • La filosofía Náhuatl estudiada desde sus fuentes de León Portilla

    • Indigenous Storywork: educating the heart, mind, body and spirit, Jo-Ann Archibald

    • El retorno a la naturaleza: apuntes sobre cosmovisión Amazónica desde los Quechua, Grimaldo Rengifo Vázquez

    • Land as Pedagogy de Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

    • En tiempos de muerte: cuerpos, pedagogías resistencias de Lorena Cabna

Image of a zoom meeting workshop

FORMAT AND AVAILABILITY

Date: Starting April 27, 2026. Every Monday.

Time: 19:00 hrs. (UTC-6)

DURATION: 6 sessions of 2.5 hrs. Each Monday.

FORMAT: Online sessions via Google Meets. Every session will be recorded for future anachronic review.

LANGUAGE: English

PRICE: 160 USD per person.
Ask about payment options.
Ask about scholarships. Send an email so we can adapt to your situation. We will be happy to reach an agreement.

Optional!

〰️

Optional! 〰️

Extended Certificate Track!

Transform your participation into documented learning time.

Same live sessions + structured independent work + final synthesis

Total hours: 40

Price: $280 USD
Ask about payment options.
Ask about scholarships. Send an email so we can adapt to your situation. We will be happy to reach an agreement

  • Peer to peer discussions

  • Listening and attention excercises

  • Deep dive into the readings

  • Document reflections

  • Final project

  • The Extended Certificate Track is an optional pathway for participants who wish to deepen their engagement beyond the live sessions.

    It includes guided readings, reflective exercises, and a final integrative assignment. Participants who complete this pathway receive a Certificate of Participation (40 hours) issued by Expresiones Bioculturales.

    You can decide to join this track during or after the course begins.

    “This is not an academic degree, but a documented learning process.”

Enroll now!

Send us an e-mail to confirm your space and receive following instructions.
Or ask more for more details.

“Born from a field-based ethnographic project in southern Mexico, this workshop applies a critical and reciprocal anthropology to develop a transformative learning community.”

Would you like to bring this workshop to your space or group?

Write to us to arrange an edition tailored to your needs.