P137: Memory, Materiality and (non)-Belonging - Minority Restaurants and Food Practices in a Global Perspective

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P137

Memory, Materiality and (non)-Belonging - Minority Restaurants and Food Practices in a Global Perspective

Convenors:: Shaheed Tayob (Stellenbosch University)
Margaretha van Es (Utrecht University)
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Formats:: Panels

Sessions:: Wednesday 22 July, 8:30-10:30, 11:00-13:00
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon

Short Abstract:

We invite paper submissions for a panel on restaurants owned and/or frequently visited by minoritized people. We are particularly interested in ethnographic studies linking food, materiality and memory to questions of value, co-existence, conflict and the ambiguities of (non) belonging.

Long Abstract:

The study of minoritized people is often occupied with questions of 'immigrant integration' and the 'accommodation of diversity'. This research, while incredibly important in the contemporary moment, betrays normative political assumptions regarding the ability of newcomers to adjust to majority contexts, and likewise the ability of host contexts, legal frameworks and institutional settings to accommodate newcomers. An unfortunate side-effect is the reification of outsiders and insiders, and the re-enforcement of national and ethnic identities. In the meantime, as scholars debate questions of accommodation, minoritized people across the world actively negotiate their position in society. Set within the fraught context of nationalist and right-wing resurgences across the globe, restaurants become material locations for the negotiation of belonging, memory and identity. Whether we study Sufi-owned restaurants in Muslim neighborhoods of Mumbai, or fashionable halal restaurants in major European cities, these sites are material expressions of self and community that cross neat boundaries of 'us' and 'them', but that may also evoke a negative backlash. However, as places for the production, consumption and exchange of food, restaurants are also places where memories of home, tastes of nostalgia, as well as ethical values are practiced, embodied and materialized. In introducing new questions and directions for the ethnographic study of restaurants, we aim to offer a new avenue for the comparative study of diversity and the everyday lived experiences of minorities in diverse contexts.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, 8:30-10:30

Food, migrants, and the negotiation of (non)belonging in popularizing the taste of home.
Jessica Steinman (Universität Leipzig)

From Home to Restaurant: Multiculturalism and Gastropolitics
Saya Devi Thongbam (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

‘Coming Out’ as a Korean in Japan: Repositioning Korean Food and Claiming Ethnicity in a Postcolonial ‘Homogeneous’ Japan
Yoko Demelius (University of Turku)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the symbolism of Koreanness is displayed through cuisine in contemporary Japan. Long-silenced minority expressions of Koreanness in the context of ‘homogeneous’ national rhetoric take advantage of the wave of global consumption.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how Korean migrants and their descendants gradually negotiate with a process of displaying their ethnic identity through cuisine in contemporary Japan. Since the defeat of the Pacific War in 1945, the post-war Japan has maintained the ideology of homogeneous Japan as the national identity. The Korean minority’s sense of belonging in Japan is complex, especially because Japan’s dominant ‘monoethnic’ national identity in its media, education system and socio-political discourse has all demanded a certain level of commitment such as the use of Japanese aliases to ‘pass’ as Japanese persons and to refrain from an overt display of the ethnic identity. Although the Korean cuisine was originally perceived as taboo in Japan, its popularity had gradually grown in the last few decades. One of the reasons is Japan’s expansion in various forms of global consumption and cultural appropriation, and the country is also forced to internationalise by taking in an increased number of new foreign labour immigrants. Recently, Japanese society started to acknowledge the embodied diversity, and the long-hidden Korean cultural artefacts such as food, music, and cultural products started to appear in the Japanese mainstream culture. By blending in the stream of multicultural consumption, the Korean cuisine has gained its space and recognition in the Japanese market. The Korean food products and culinary events have become the cornerstone of the Korean minority’s ethnic expressions in various socio-political platforms and cultural production. By repositioning Korean cultural artefacts such as food, the Korean ethnicity is increasingly being accepted by Japanese society.

The human right to adequate food, culture and food security. a case study of food culture in Katsikas refugee camp
Liliane Abdalla (Lisbon School of Economics and Management)

Operating a Turkish-inspired restaurant in Berlin: Food as Profit, Belonging and Care
Shaheed Tayob (Stellenbosch University) Veronica Wüst

Negotiating Kashrut in Palestinians food spaces in Israel
Azri Amram (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)

Developing a taste for difference? Migrant advocacy and gastronomic diversity in Slovakia
Eva-Maria Walther (Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the strained conversation between migrants and pro-migrant activists on the potential and hazards of using popular ethnic foods to foster mutual understanding and promote acceptance by the predominantly xenophobic mainstream society in an emerging immigration state, Slovakia.

Paper long abstract:

In countries that self-identify as traditionally homogeneous, the appearance of restaurants offering dishes from different cuisines and cultural backgrounds is among the first visible tokens of commencing international immigration. These establishments are usually welcomed by locals, even in Slovakia, where the arrival of migrants is perceived predominantly as a threat: Politicians cater to the populations' anxieties, fueling xenophobic sentiments and fear of "foreign infiltration". The paper is based on fieldwork in a Bratislava-based NGO and their awareness-raising campaign titled "Cudzincov máme plné zuby", a provocative play with words that can be translated to "We are fed up with foreigners" as well as "We are being fed by foreigners". The project, which entailed the creation of a "foodie-map" of minority restaurants in Bratislava, takes Slovak appreciation of foreign foods as a starting point to negotiate the acceptance and belonging of the people who make it. This promotion of openness and community over food is juxtaposed with the experience of many foreigners of being barred from the local labor market and having to resort to unskilled, precarious and oftentimes irregular positions in gastronomic establishments, particularly those that are ethnically marked but do not intersect with their own origins, like Kebab stands and Indian restaurants. Describing how Slovaks and non-Slovaks interpret the multifarious symbolic dimensions of offering each other food, I explore the tensions between celebrating diversity, reifying difference and glossing over race- and class-based discrimination in an emerging immigration society.

Cilingir Sofrasi: Unlocking the Politics of Modernity and Masculinity
Janna Tamargo (University of Florida)

Paper short abstract:

This study explores how women successfully challenged the way in which dominant male social constraints defined and molded them by demanding space in meyhane, a type of restaurant found in Turkey which dates back to the Byzantine Empire. My research will show how women have pushed the doors of meyhane open, claiming their seats at the table, reinventing the “authentic” meyhane. By doing so, women have forced not only the meyhane to redefine itself, but also the dominant social and cultural discourses to reinterpret what the public is and what being a woman means in Turkey. Of course various studies have been done to see how women resisted and provoked change, but this is a particular novel field. Meyhane was such an exclusively male space for a while that women’s entrance indeed speaks volumes to the manner in which they caused a cultural transformation. The objective of the research is to identify the determining factors and characteristics that help formulate “authenticity” in modern day meyhane now that women have unlocked a place at the cilingir sofrasi.

Paper long abstract:

Food is an important part of culture and can be a symbol of pride for a community. Since food itself can be considered a cultural symbol, attention should be paid to the relation among food and culture. What is of particular interest is the manner in which food, through identities are constructed, re-interpreted, challenged, and modified, reflects or perhaps tells us a story about culture itself. The examination of authenticity has gained importance in our increasingly multi-cultural society. While scholars agree that defining authenticity is challenging because of the influences of globalization, the demand for “authentic” food experiences continues.

This study explores how women successfully challenged the way in which dominant male social constraints defined and molded them by demanding space in meyhane, a type of restaurant found in Turkey which dates back to the Byzantine Empire. My research will show how women have pushed the doors of meyhane open, claiming their seats at the table, reinventing the “authentic” meyhane. By doing so, women have forced not only the meyhane to redefine itself, but also the dominant social and cultural discourses to reinterpret what the public is and what being a woman means in Turkey. The objective of the research is to identify the determining factors and characteristics that help formulate “authenticity” in modern day meyhane now that women have unlocked a place at the cilingir sofrasi.

Based on a pilot study done during a semester at Boğaziçi University, I developed a research framework to investigate how people create authenticity within the meyhanes of Istanbul, Turkey using qualitative analysis. The methodological framework is based on open-ended interviews with restaurant owners throughout the many burrows of Istanbul. The study contains data from both the European and Asian sides of the city. The face-to-face interviews were conducted at the restaurants of the respondents. Snowball sampling was used to recruit respondents. Archival data was also gathered on how women first made their way into the meyhane, and what the social reaction to their presence was.

Previous research acknowledges the complexities of how societies define “authentic” food and the constant evolution of the concept. Of course various studies have been done to see how women resisted and caused change, but this is a particular novel field. Meyhane was such an exclusively male space for a while that women’s entrance indeed speaks volumes to the manner in which they caused a cultural transformation. As all “authentic” identities are constructed and culturally fragmented by society, initially so was the data that was collected from the restaurant owners, but patterns started to emerge through analysis. Woman dominated the recurring themes surrounding cultural social change. The role of the environment, food and culture resonated, but meyhane, an “authentic” experience has withstood historical changes, and kept its core identity intact for centuries. The meyhane creates the “third place” where everyone is welcome, including women, and people are accepted and allowed to be “authentic”.

New horizons of investigation in social and cultural anthropology: border studies of the city and of space. Urban Bars and Restaurants
Sergio Gil (UB) Federica Marzioni (Gastropologia)

Paper short abstract:

The systematisation of qualitative material collected between 2012 and 2018 by means of a thorough ethnographic investigation carried out in different bars in Barcelona, is a res- ponse to the detection of an obvious lack of a formulation of a solid problematic theoretic- methodological that evidences the depth of the relationship between urban anthropology and the bar, as a builder of urbanity. We thus propose the opening of a new strand of analy- sis, based on the contributions of urban studies, proxemics, sociology, architecture and anthropology of feeding, which in the field opened by this discipline, Gastropology, find their connective structure. The proposal departs from the notion of "frontier" as an analytical category of the urban, within which whose dimensions, the margin and the centre constantly touch. In Gastropo- logy, the bar is configured as a paradigmatic and unique space-frontier: a physical, symbo- lic, cognitive and political framework, perceptible only through its movement, endowed with meaning as a product of its dialectical relationship with what is outside from the frontality. Frontality is the condition of interacting from the front and implies spatial and social proxi- mity. Being outside is the antagonistic position that is assumed with respect to that of the dog- matic. The border allows the simultaneity of the two conditions giving rise to, or generating space for, unprecedented social and political practices, consolidating the infinity of possible out- comes. In gastropology, the bar is interpreted as an irreplaceable socialising agent, stage and trig- ger of the non-hierarchical encounter. In other words, frontal, everything with everything: the bodies, the spaces, their components and their coordinates.

Paper long abstract:

the form of sociability that develops in bars, in all its modalities, corresponds to the idea of worldliness, which obliges each participant to maintain at all times a plurality of language that allows them to feel comfortable in the variety of social frameworks in which they are involved. This relational versatility presupposes a certain sideways glance of one’s identity in order to facilitate its adaptability, since an excessive degree of protago- nism on the part of the speaker would be considered impolite, in a context in which mutual praise and mutual signs of interest prevail. As noted, those attending a bar – regulars, if they are habitual – hope to meet people who, like them, want and try to remain at the same time both unknown and available. This is an example in miniature of what Lyn H. Lo- fland (1973) calls, referring to social life in public places in general, "a society of strangers", or, in other words, a society of people who maintain a link that can be deep, but not strategic, like those linked by ties of friendship. (Cucó, 2001).

Social life in bars implies, in effect, a “school of worldliness”, in which each of those pre- sent displays an ability to behave in public in scenarios open to relationships, predisposing themselves to submit to the requests and judgements of those who share with him that same space and to move in this world with a certain agility. It is thus about an “indetermi- nate sociability”, open to a constant "anticipation of what’s coming", for which this abstrac- tion of social identity and the privilege of the mask and disguise is indispensable.

Given that those in attendance join each relationship as indeterminate characters, they must do so by instantly becoming sociologists or ethnologists, being continuously able to

interpret what others are saying and doing, which is essential to know what attitude to take at any given moment. It refers to that process of instruction that every individual, in modern and urban contexts, performs throughout their life, through which they acquire a whole re- pertoire of meanings and competences that enables them to know how to read and mana- ge the social code in and through the variety of scenarios that make up the urban scene (Lofland, 1973: 97). Those who meet in a bar, whether regularly or sporadically, apply in their meetings a layman’s sociology, understood by Garfinkel (2006 [1968]) as that practi- cal knowledge available to every individual to interpret what happens and understand and execute what must be done from the detection of patterns of behaviour shared with those with whom they communicate in meetings, such as those of a bar, ephemeral and infor- mal.

The environment of each room, the distribution of its movable elements, the lighting, the spatial behaviour of those present, as well as the proxemic and kinetic dimensions of the behaviours that are recorded, from an ethology inspired viewpoint, will be described in de- tail.

Beyond the traditionally understood participant observation, we know that this practice of ethnographic investigation takes different forms in the scenario investigated, being able to be used “simultaneously, sequentially or alternatively” (Ferrándiz, 2011: 90). What is known as non-obtrusive observation or simple observation (Webb et al., 2000) consists in following the flows of action without actively intervening or interfering with them.

Naturally, semi-structured and in-depth interviews are going to take place. These inter- views will be considered complementary tools to the participant and non-obtrusive obser- vation, seeking the way in which the subjects themselves rationalise their experiences in these meeting places.

Halal dining in Rotterdam
Margaretha van Es (Utrecht University)