Culinary and social practices revolve around the same mereological question: How to make wholes out of parts? In the case of food, actors combine ingredients to form meals; in the case of fellow social actors, they decide with whom to form bonds. Following Lévi-Strauss’ interest in what I call “culinary mereology,” this article explores structural similarities between how the inhabitants of a Western Kenyan market place cook and how they treat each other as social beings in polygamous and monogamous homesteads. In-depth discussions of ethnographic data combined with a re-reading of Lévi-Strauss’ will help to understand that in Western Kenya cooking as well as establishing and maintaining social relations in homesteads through serving food rely upon mereological practices that obviate the distinction between continuous and discrete wholes in order to uphold the potential of change.

烹饪和社会实践围绕着一个同样的论点问题：如何使整体成为零碎？就食物而言，演员们将各种食材混合在一起制成饭菜；对于其他社会行为者，他们决定与谁建立联系。跟随列维·斯特劳斯（Lévi-Strauss）对我所谓的“烹饪纹章学”的兴趣之后，本文探讨了肯尼亚西部市场的居民如何做饭以及他们如何在一夫多妻制和一夫一妻制宅基地中将彼此视为社会人之间的结构相似性。