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- Convenors:
-
Giovanna Capponi
(University of Roehampton)
Renata Menezes (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
Joana Bahia (State University of Rio de Janeiro)
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Short Abstract:
This panel would like to analyse how the materiality of food and substances is employed and conceived in a changing world, and how the ecological imbalance of the present times affects our relationship with what we consider sacred and spiritually charged.
Long Abstract:
Concepts such as power and energy permeate the material world in the most diverse religious and cultural contexts, just as various material means produce an idea of charisma and spiritual strength. Food items, blood, plant extracts, powders, oils, water and incense are consumed and used in various ritual processes. All these substances accompany the religious experience of social actors, produce assemblages and reconfigure relations between things, subjects and other beings, but also natural elements and places charged with spiritual power. Food, along with other substances, is also involved in the processes of sacralization of the body, living beings, and nature or notions of illness and healing, purity, and danger, relevant not only among specific religious traditions but in association with diffuse spiritualities.
This panel would like to analyse how the materiality of food and substances is employed and conceived in a changing world, and how the ecological imbalance of the present times affects our relationship with what we consider sacred and spiritually charged.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 11 April, 2023, -Joana Bahia (State University of Rio de Janeiro) Farlen de Jesus Nogueira (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
Paper short abstract:
The present work analyses the interface between Quimbanda, food and the digital environment. Quimbanda is an Afro-Brazilian faith that has grown in the virtual universe through consultations and other uses of digital media. We analyse the production of food in the fabrication of the online spell.
Paper long abstract:
The present work analyses the interface between Quimbanda, food and the digital environment. Quimbanda is an Afro-Brazilian faith that has grown in the virtual universe through consultations and other uses of digital media. We analyze the production of food in the fabrication of the online spell.
Besides analysing the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram pages of these religious groups, we interviewed and followed the daily life of a master, and also carried out bibliographical research on the subject. In their daily practices, the Quimbandeiros use the Internet as a space for interaction, for daily practices of care and in the manufacturing of spells. Much of the production of the spell involves great manufacture of food and in the production of multiple substances that make up the digital scenario of part of the posts about this religious practice.
We analyse how digital interaction presents this religious belief in the virtual public sphere and the interconnections between food, religious and technological narratives. We observed a circuit that includes practitioners in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais and in the Northeast (Pernambuco and Bahia/Quimbanda das Almas) and in other countries such as Portugal, Belgium, Australia and England.
Giovanna Capponi (University of Roehampton)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I analyse food offerings in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé and I explain how the composition of the ingredients, substances and energies can be subjected to change, innovation, renegotiation and intuition with and through more-than-human entities and beings.
Paper long abstract:
In Afro-Brazilian candomblé, ritual practices involve not only a set of rules imposed by tradition, but also experience and expertise in the making and manipulation of ingredients, objects and energies. In this sense, I would like to use the metaphor of rituals as recipes: to make a certain dish, certain ingredients are necessary. While some of these items can be substituted, others are fundamental to maintain the identity of the dish. However, all practices need to be negotiated with the deities and entities, and assembled according to the resources available in the material context. In this work based on ethnographic research, I intend to take into consideration the role of intuition, ritual knowledge and sensoriality in the construction of the offerings and the ritual performance.
Gisele Fonseca Chagas (Universidade Federal Fluminense)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how Sufi religious identities are constructed in a Damascene tariqa through exploring food practices and discourses mobilized by its charismatic Shaykh (the local religious authority).
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how Sufi religious identities are constructed in a Damascene tariqa through exploring food practices and discourses mobilized by its charismatic Shaykh. The tariqa’s Shaykh built his religious reputation, among other things, on his Quranic as well phytotherapeutic knowledge, which mix combinations of medicinal herbs, teas or certain types of food for those who seek him to heal some physical/spiritual evil. The Shaykh authored a book dealing specifically with the subject, claiming that it was written following Prophet Muhammad's recommendations on healthy food and drink. Beyond Islamic halal and haram classifications, the main idea is to show how in this ethnographic context the Sufi leader trained his disciples on the spiritual path through teaching them on food practices, connecting natural food, human health and God’s commands.
Stefan Williamson Fa (Lund University)
Paper short abstract:
In Islam, food is employed in the mediation of relations between humans and the divine, often as a votive to seek blessing. In the pluralistic setting of North Eastern Turkey, amongst shared practices of votive-food offerings the substance of food matters in the negotiation of sectarian relations.
Paper long abstract:
In many religious traditions food is employed in the mediation of relations between humans and the divine. For Muslims, food can serve as a votive, an intercessory medium for seeking blessing and grace from God. The day of Ashura, the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, is particularly holy for Muslims of different denominations. For Turkey’s Shiʿi and Alevi minorities, Ashura marks the tragic martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, and is considered a day of mourning. However, Sunni communities claim it is a particularly auspicious date as it is connected to several historic events, including the landing of Noah’s Ark. The distinct understandings of this holy day are materialized in each community’s divergent votive food offerings – Shiʿa cook helva, a flour-based sweet associated with funerals, while Sunni cook ashure, a rich festive pudding made of fruits, nuts and grain. Based on fieldwork in Northeastern Turkey, this paper focuses on the practice of distributing these distinct votive foods and their meaning for sectarian relations. In a pluralistic setting like this, sharing votive foods not only serves as a pious act to foster relations with God but is significant in the complex negotiation and navigation of intra-religious relations.
Luciana Lang (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at the role played by older people as carriers of cultural heritage in religious spaces. Drawing on ethnography conducted in four religious spaces in Manchester, United Kingdom, this analysis assess the material and immaterial elements that constitute religious heritage.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on ethnography conducted in four religious spaces in Manchester, United Kingdom, this paper assesses the protagonist role of older people in promoting cultural heritage in faith-based spaces (e.g., mosques/temples/churches/synagogues), where commensality emerges as a key aspect of that transmission of knowledge. In some faith communities, religion and culture are seen as one, and as an important social infrastructure, religious spaces promote social connectivity through commensality. Ethnographic work conducted in religious spaces revealed that younger participants often see older people as ‘carriers of culture’, and religious spaces as places where traditions are enacted. This is a relevant finding that reveals the important role of older people in transmitting knowledge that younger generations have limited access to, with materials mediating between them and their spirituality. These forms of knowledge include particular rituals, songs, foods, and other embodied practices performed by older people. The research has provided insights into the ways in which health, well-being and social inclusion can be enhanced through the involvement of faith-based organisations.
Tamalone Eijnden (University of Twente)
Paper short abstract:
I will analyze examples of food commoning in fiction (a fantasy sci-fi novel and movie) and practice (an activist initiatives in Amsterdam) to show how food as a commons operates as a material-semiotic healer to the ills that have led to environmental degradation.
Paper long abstract:
Food’s capacity to keep bodies healthy is not only about feeding nutrients into individual metabolic cycles, it also involves communities of human and more-than-human eaters and the meanings derived from specific ways of eating together. As such, material-semiotic ways of eating together create different communities ( Haraway, 2007). In this paper, I will turn to examples of food commoning in fiction and practice to show how food as a commons operates as a material-semiotic healer to the ills that have led to environmental degradation.
In order to draw out the imagined healing power of food commons, I will turn to ecotopian fiction of the 1990s (Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing and Serreau’s The Beautiful Green) and show how spiritually-inclined, female-governed food commons are the means to healing sick bodies and social conflict. Yet, while relegated to the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy, the food commons are materially grounded in historical examples of women who sought to heal their communities through land commoning (Federici, 2019). By analysing recent environmental activist initiatives in Amsterdam, I will show that the idea of food commons yields its healing power, precisely because it is a material-semiotic phenomenon, able to transcend the divides between fiction and practice, and capable of telling stories of alternative pasts, presents and futures. At a time when the urgency for system change is undeniable, yet the collective desire to change structures and habits marginal, food as a material-semiotic healer may serve as a new impulse for the transitions ahead.