Yet “all the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.’ ”[17] We find the story heartwarming, but they found it offensive. Why? Because meals are what the anthropologist Mary Douglas called “boundary markers.”[18] Meals bring people together, but they also keep people apart. Think of the pre–civil rights restaurants with signs on the door saying Whites Only, or, in the UK, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Even today, think of how restaurants are often stratified by class. Even in the no-brow places we tend to love,[19] most of us eat with friends or family,
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