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- Convenors:
-
Raul Matta
(Institut de Recherche pour le Développement)
Charles-Édouard de Suremain (UMR 208 (IRDMNHNCNRS))
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- Discussant:
-
Chantal Crenn
(Université Paul Valéry Montpellier)
- Stream:
- Food
- Location:
- KWZ 0.610
- Start time:
- 28 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
Drawing on anthropological approaches to heritage, identity, representation, and migration, among others, we analyze the notions of continuity, rupture, substitution, change and creativity, memory, and belonging contained in the relationship between food and the multiple understandings of dwelling.
Long Abstract:
As a form of heritage, food and culinary practices are reflective of identities of solidarity and separateness in relevant social groups. Such identities are negotiated, reconfigured, and contested within particular social and cultural environments. As a social construction, the term "home" is polysemic. It can be a physical place infused with domestic notions of family and privacy; a broader geographical place in terms of locality, region, or nation; and, in a more emotional sense, a feeling of belonging to a group of people or a culture. In a current context of change, uncertainty, mobility, and displacement, this panel interrogates the myriad ways in which food and foodways express identification, belonging, relief, comfort (also good/healthy life) and, more particularly, the strategies and narratives that social actors and the state employ in their various relationships to food and culinary practices to tackle these issues. We encourage submissions which draw on anthropological and empirical approaches to heritage, identity, representation, and migration studies, among others, to analyze the notions of continuity, rupture, substitution, change and creativity, memory, nostalgia, and belonging contained in the relationship between food and the multiple understandings of "home" and "dwelling". Topics covering issues such as home and institutional cooking, food provisioning and distribution, consumption patterns, food heritage and memories, gender and power relations "in the kitchen", changes in taste and in the affective attachment to local and traditional foods, circulation of foodstuffs (e.g. food remittances) and food technologies, and political/authoritative allocations of food are highly welcomed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
In this presentation, drawing on fieldwork from a Rio de Janeiro favela, I will explore food and choices of what to eat or not to eat as means of assertion of agency, and an attempt at sensemaking in a volatile urban context.
Paper long abstract:
Informants would urge me not to accept food from everyone, as there were people with a "bad heart". In the context of, at times, everyday shootings in the Rio de Janeiro favela where I conducted a year of fieldwork in (2014-2015), the fear of potentially being poisoned initially seemed of little relevance to me. Nevertheless, the reoccurring warnings pointed in a direction I grew a fascination for, namely, the ways in which my informants by controlling their intake of food was about asserting one's agency in an uncertain lifeworld. And while the stories of the poisoning other grew to accumulate, so did the invitations of sharing a meal in homes, sandwich bars, buffets, and even (relatively) expensive restaurants in the elite South Zone of the city. Thus, I will begin this presentation by talking about the food informants chose to eat or not to eat; the kind of relations they sought to thereby establish, or put an end to; and finally, the kind of bodies that were therein desired and made, and the kinds of social worlds they attempted to inhabit through them as vessels.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will focus on the "Mediterranean Diet" as a heritage object and discuss how different discourses are mobilized vis-à-vis the idea of a Mediterranean identity activated through food consumption, questioning alongside local food practices in a post-heritagization context.
Paper long abstract:
The inscription of the "Mediterranean Diet" as intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO (2013) is the starting point for a reflection on food, identity and belonging trigged by this process of heritagization and its most immediate effects: the use of the "Mediterranean Diet" as a touristic product, and the uses that diverse social actors make of the discourse of this food heritagization.
Focussing on Tavira, the representative city of the Portuguese application, this communication aims to discuss, through an ethnographic research, some questions raised by institutional discourses in the post-heritagization scenario of the "Mediterranean Diet", but also intends to discuss local discourses and practices on food consumption, its ruptures and continuities.
The first question that we are interested in discuss concerns how the sense of belonging to a Mediterranean universe and to a Mediterranean identity is activated through a supposed food communion shared between seven countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco, Cyprus and Croatia), and how the expression of an institutional speech praising the idea of a Mediterranean belonging is managed in a country with an essentially Atlantic geography as Portugal.
In second place we are interested in discussing how local populations engage or disengage the Mediterranean discourse, and how they incorporate or not the "mediterranean" ingredients and food practices in their daily consumptions, appropriating or rejecting the identity 'markers' of the "Mediterranean Diet" as the importance of seasonality of food, or valuing food itinerary from the origin to the table.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the transmission of food as heritage in the London Afghan diaspora to understand how populations resulting from forced displacement reconcile memories of home with experiences in the host-nation. In doing so, it shows one process of forging British-Afghan identity in the city.
Paper long abstract:
The effect of taste as a deeply individual and social experience that bind groups through space and time gives food the invaluable, yet unexplored, potential from which to study the formation of identity of diasporic groups in cities.
This paper examines the transmission of food as heritage in the Afghan diaspora in London to understand how populations resulting from forced displacement reconcile the memory of home with their experiences in the host-nation in the process of identity formation. The ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan have resulted in three discreet waves of migration since the 1980s. Through interviews with seventeen migrant Afghan women, this paper suggests that the consolidation of an Afghan food identity abroad is made more transparent because of the diaspora's forced nature and ongoing materialization. This case shows how culinary practices can forge reimagined communities that overcome regional differences within the homeland. Moreover, Afghan cuisine within the public sphere of London has been shaped by the British imperial world-system. All the interviewees set the authenticity of Afghan cuisine in opposition to the larger and more established Indian and Pakistani communities that historically influenced them. Despite the proliferation of Afghan restaurants in London within the past ten years, they are restricted to areas with high populations of Afghans. Nonetheless, interviewees preferred to eat Western food when in public and cook Afghan food at home. This case thus demonstrates how culinary practices can attest to a group's willingness to identify with their host nation without belittling their authentic cultural identity.
Paper short abstract:
Using Finnish folktales as my source data, this paper explores the power relations between the peasant majority and the Roma minority dealing with food and eating. Narratives poke fun at the Roma’s strict customs of ritual observances connected to pollution, such as avoiding certain kinds of foods.
Paper long abstract:
Using Finnish folktales as my source data, this paper explores the power relations between the majority members of the peasant society and the Roma dealing with food and eating. Narratives were collected during 1880-1950 at the time when acceptable folklore included ethnic tales, oftentimes exclusive and mean, and folklore was considered to serve as the cultural heritage of the majority members of a society. Historically the Roma groups across Europe have been identified as the 'cultural other', which, such as the Finnish Roma, upheld age-old customs, food taboos and rules of cleanliness. Although the main feature of the Finnish Roma was their vagrant style of life, they lived in close proximity to rural farmers, who provided a livelihood and temporary shelter. Therefore, encounters between the peasant majority and the Roma minority occurred in peasant dwellings and the settings in tales typically consist of the Roma entering a farmhouse trying to beg for food. The tales poke fun at the Roma's strict customs of ritual observances connected to pollution, such as avoiding certain kinds of meat or as eating peculiar or inferior foods. The narratives about the Roma were deliberately collected to illustrate how dissimilar "gypsies"—as they were labelled in the materials—were and how the majority population viewed the minority group. This paper focuses on both the use of folklore (and its food motif) as a rhetorical means of sending messages outside the community and as a vessel for constructing insiders' sense of belonging to a majority community.
Paper short abstract:
At the organic store Yggdrasill, people could sip tea, swap stories, sniff apples, and vilify parents who give their kids "industrial" baby-food. In this paper, I explore ways in which dwelling at an organic store created intimate relationships and a sense of belonging to an organic food community.
Paper long abstract:
How can the sweet smell of an organic apple make you feel at home? What can feelings of love and affection, trust and gratitude, anger and anxiety, doubt and disappointment, tell us about how people establish food communities and intimate relationships within the long distances of the food chain? One thing that often distinguishes organic food from other food is the emotional engagement of organic producers, middlemen and consumers. Selling and shopping for organic food, for instance, are emotional practices that create and sustain specific food values.
At the Icelandic organic store Yggdrasill, customers slowly pushed earthy, dark-green shopping carts between aisles, and at the counter they shared small talk with the staff while packing the groceries. In many ways, Yggdrasill was an "alternative" shopping space in contrast to "mainstream" retail spaces, with regard to its ideas, identity, practices and products. For many people the store even felt like a "community center" where they could hang out and relax, sip organic tea, swap stories, sniff apples, and vilify parents who give their kids "industrial" baby-food. In this paper, I explore ways in which dwelling at the organic store Yggdrasill created intimate relationships and a sense of belonging to an organic food community.
Paper short abstract:
Cette communication considèrera le développement de la nourriture mexicaine dans les quartiers migrants de Chicago (Pilsen, La Villita, notamment) à la fois dans sa régionalisation et dans sa patrimonialisation. Quelle est la construction de la notion du "comme chez soi" dans l'espace public ?
Paper long abstract:
Cette communication considèrera le développement de la nourriture mexicaine dans les quartiers migrants de Chicago (Pilsen, La Villita, notamment) d'un double point de vue. D'une part, avec la circulation des hommes et des produits alimentaires, elle se régionalise (nourriture de l'Etat de Guerrero, du Michoacán principalement) du côté des restaurants de quartier, des stands de nourriture urbains, festivals de rue et fêtes de migrants ; d'autre part, elle se patrimonialise avec certaines institutions, comme le Musée National d'Art Mexicain qui entretient les traditions festives (fête des morts, Fêtes patriotes, fête de la Vierge de la Guadalupe) comme l'un des aspects de l'art de vivre "à la mexicaine", aux côtés des arts plastiques et des créations d'artisanat d'art.
Face à cela, on s'interrogera sur la construction de la notion du "comme chez soi" dans l'espace public du fait de la présence de cette offre alimentaire mexicaine. Existe-t-il une continuité ou une rupture fondamentale avec les restaurants ou nourritures de rue existant dans les espaces de départ ? S'agit-il au contraire de proposer une continuité, une nostalgie et une mémoire des saveurs à la population mexicaine de Chicago qui serait en fort changement de normes sociales et alimentaires ?
Concernant les aspects méthodologiques, on insistera sur les méthodes anthropologiques de terrain, en particulier en ethnographie visuelle (photo-élicitation) et en ethnographie urbaine.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores ways in wich actions based on food made up by the activists of a local association in Italy create spaces of inclusion and solidarity between the civil society and newly arrived migrants. Ethnographical cases will show how food can be a tool for agency and for political action.
Paper long abstract:
The present paper will look at contemporary processes of forced migration, exploring ways in wich actions based on food made up by the activists of a local association create spaces of inclusion and solidarity between the civil society and newly arrived migrants and, following Rozakou (2016), challenge boundaries and State-based definitions. These actions include, among other things, provisioning and distribution of food to migrants just arrived in Italy crossing the Mediterranean route, as well as organization of public events in which food plays the main role.
Through ethnographical cases derived from an on going field research carried in Rome, Italy, we'll try to show how food can be a tool for agency and for political action. Analytical attention will be paid to the concept of 'event' as characterized by an ambiguous nature where the home and the new coexist, can be shown and performed (Lewis, 2010).
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Moroccan women living in Milan hinterland in Italy, this paper aims at exploring the negotiated ways of performing both cultural and social belongings through food and at pointing out how these two dimensions can diverge or overlap in practice.
Paper long abstract:
Migration constitutes for human beings an opportunity - among others - to develop a reflexive gaze upon one's own habits (Rodier 2010), food habits in the case under study. In fact, not only changes that may occur in the ways of eating, cooking and supplying of produces, but also new relationships push individuals to question their everyday practices, which are associated with specific meanings. These meanings are socially and culturally oriented and performative, since they permit to state belongings as well as to take part to differently defined groups.
In order to study these dynamics, I will present some ethnographic data collected during a research among Moroccan women living in Milan hinterland in Italy, mainly focusing on the history of two of them. The description of food practices, embedded in the narration of the migration experience and its consequences, which in its turn interacts with contextual discourses around immigrants and cultural diversity, reveals unexpected strategies to take social and cultural positionings within the collectivity.
The theoretical framework upon which my analysis relies consists of a praxeological approach to subjectivation (Warnier 2001) combined with the consideration of the multi-dimensionality of the self which is derived from the intersectional perspective on identity (Crenshaw 1989; Anthias 2002; Yuval-Davis 2006). Through concrete practices involving food, individuals - women in this case - define their self as a layered complex of belongings, and they do that at both social and cultural level; thus proving how these two dimensions can diverge or overlap.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the shifting of national identity through food that has left its “home.” It looks at the case of Japan, particularly sushi and locally-trained but now foreign-based sushi chefs, to investigate the processes of identity transformation through “migrated” national food.
Paper long abstract:
The status and image of sushi as food have shifted - seismically it may be said - within the past few decades, from being an esoteric but tasteless and downright unappetizing raw-fish victual of Japanese origin, to becoming a healthy and desirable delicacy consumed no longer exclusively in Japan but in an ever-increasing number of countries and cities around the world, in multiple styles and versions targeting all kinds of consumers. Japan, referred to by many within and outside the country as the "birthplace of sushi," has reacted to the transforming status of sushi through the years in various ways, from amusement to shock (at many "blasphemous" styles of sushi abroad, for example), and to humiliation and alarm (particularly towards Japan's weakening grip on what is considered a quintessential "Japanese" food).
This paper is an inquiry into the shift of national identity through food that has been taken out of its "home," that is, its place or origin. It focuses on sushi and particularly sushi chefs from Japan who have been trained in the country but now work abroad, to investigate the ways and processes through which national identity is linked to food in the Japanese case, and how identity shifts its shape/s - or not - when the food as well as its maker venture outside the boundaries of its nation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws from online food blogs, interviews, and personal recollections to examine ritual utterance and laughter during consumption of first fruits in Turkey. This invites us to reflect on the role of ritual laughter and also on the boundaries between the present and a ritually dense past.
Paper long abstract:
This exploratory paper is part of a broader research project on alternative economies of food and narrative in Turkey and draws from online food blogs, interviews, and personal recollections to examine ritual utterance and laughter during the consumption of first fruits in Turkey and the Middle East. Eating a particular fruit for the first time in the spring is treated as a special occasion and is marked by performative utterance or by an increased awareness of generosity. As an early plum or grape passes the boundary of the body, the consumer expels, or often bursts forth in forced laughter. In the utterances or gestures that accompany or precede this laughter, the person may wish her pain or disease go to a social outcast category, or they pretend-rub the fruit on their behind before a bite. For others, this is an occasion to confine oneself to the home, or to seek out or demonstrate generosity. Some report only eating the first fruit from the hands of a generous person, and others insist only on eating it in the confines of the home. This enactment invites us to reflect on the roles attributed to the sound of ritual laughter on the one hand, and also on the various boundaries, between the body and out of the body and between the home and beyond. First fruit rituals, depicted with nostalgia by food bloggers, offer an "expression of differentiation" between what is perceived to be an uncertain present and a past of ritual density.