Why milk is never just milk: the hidden politics of an everyday drink
Alum JC Niala features in new BBC Ideas Film
How much do we really know about the history, politics and industry that nestle inside a glass of milk?
Milk is one of the most familiar foods in our lives. Our first food, it has a long association with health and home. Conversations about milk easily trigger childhood memories and everyday routines.
But how much do we really know about the history, politics and industry that nestle inside a glass of milk?
‘Five surprising things you probably didn’t know about milk’, a new BBC Ideas film co-produced in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Social Sciences Division, explores how something seemingly so ordinary can reveal much bigger stories about human evolution, industrialisation, colonialism, language, animal relationships and the future of food.
JC Niala and Johanna Zetterström-Sharp“Once you look closely at a glass of milk, you find histories of evolution, language and industrialisation. What we hope the film does is make people look again at something they thought they already knew.”
An anthropological perspective
The film features Dr JC Niala, Deputy Director and Head of Research, Teaching and Collections at the University of Oxford’s History of Science Museum, who completed her doctorate in Anthropology here at the school in 2023. Along with Dr Johanna Zetterström-Sharp, Associate Professor in Heritage Studies at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology.
Drawing on their AHRC-funded research project, Milking It! Colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy, the pair challenge some of the assumptions that have made milk seem such a natural and uncomplicated part of everyday life.
JC Niala’s anthropological perspective reveals how an everyday substance connects intimate experience to wider histories of power, culture and change. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the UK and Kenya, conversations about milk illuminate how people understand themselves, their relationships and the worlds they inhabit.
The film is produced as part of Oxford’s Social Sciences Division’s ongoing partnership with BBC Ideas, which brings academic research to new audiences through short, accessible films exploring surprising and thought-provoking ideas.
Dr JC Niala. BBC Ideas.
Explore the BBC Ideas collection
Including previous films by members of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and films made for the ongoing collaboration between Oxford’s Social Sciences Division and BBC Ideas.
