Paper short abstract:

Food in the Cretan migrants' culture is examined as a way to manipulate change and dislocation, to reconstruct continuity with tradition and retain bonds with the place/culture of origin. This symbolic process is put in the context of renegotiating power relations between rural and urban localities.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation we examine the role of food and eating in the Cretan migrants' culture as a way to manipulate change and dislocation, to reconstruct continuity with past and tradition and further to retain bonds with the place/culture of origin. In the Greek context "ξενιτειά" is the counterpart of migration, being a status that can only been compared to the experiences of loss, absence and death. Accordingly, in the case of Cretans living in Athens, the manipulation of what they name "traditional food" in a variety contexts reveals "nostalgia" and the need for "returning to the whole" in Fernandez (1986) and Sutton's terms (2001); while this notion also functions as symbolic delineation of boundaries, reconstruction of identities and a channel for transmitting cultural knowledge. At the same time change/innovation is manipulated and mediated by power of a 'traditional' culinary system, which is strongly embedded in the culture of Cretan diaspora and provides a link between their past and new socio-cultural environment. Interestingly, however, these local symbolic processes resume a different status in light of recent health promotion campaigns about the benefits of Cretan traditional food and Mediterranean diet in general. The resulting 'inversion' of Cretan diet in the Athenian context offers new opportunities for the renegotiation of power relations between rural and urban localities.