One of my favorite memories of being a student of Tom’s is sitting in his office with him one afternoon, surrounded by books, looking together at a Spanish website selling artisanal ham. We scrolled through many pages of hams and considered their characteristics and what sorts of conditions of production led to them all. To be advised by Tom was to be plunged into thinking richly ethnographically, and in many new directions: from pig to ham, or from human to animal to microbe, or from farmer’s market to supermarket, to name only a few, while at the same time, rigorously pushing the contours of anthropological theory to give new understanding.
I was always so thankful for Tom’s kindness and support, and for his willingness to think through the many dimensions, sites, senses, and species of my fieldwork. Tom helped me to see with new eyes, operating at different scales and under several time horizons, and to be unafraid of empirical complexity or historicity. Tom’s other gift was to bring people together – his wonderful holiday parties with people laughing and toasting, eating paella and taking in the joy that came with celebration and simply being with. Thank you so much Tom. You are so missed.