Muslims and Meals

The Social and Symbolic Function of Foods in Changing Socio-Economic Environments

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2590496
AutoresAbbebe Kifleyesus (autor correspondente)
Ano2002
Volume72
Fascículo2
Páginas245-276
Data de publicação2002-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3366/afr.2002.72.2.245
OpenAlexW2128197450
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas37

This article is about ideas and practices concerning the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food among the Muslim Argobba of Ethiopia. Food among the Muslim Argobba of Ethiopia is an essential idiom, both for drawing a hierarchy of in-group/out-group distinctions and for expressing relationships within groups. The in-group/out-group relations are typically expressed in terms of what foods are consumed by the Muslim Argobba and their non-Muslim Amhara neighbours, by the Muslim Argobba and their Muslim Oromo and Adal neighbours and indeed by some wealthy trader Argobba families and poor Argobba peasant households. Food preparation and distribution, on the other hand, express relations internal to the group, either in terms of gender within the household, as in who serves what to whom, where and in what quantities, or in informal exchanges, as in establishing social links among men and women. Nowadays fewer and fewer Argobba are producing the food they consume, and many are drawn away from their rural homelands either as merchants or as wage labourers. The article examines how Argobba consumers have become accustomed to foreign foods and new modes of preparation and distribution and how such changes have also altered the ways in which food has expressed social relations in terms of class, ethnic and gender identity. It investigates the relative importance of the social and symbolic function of Muslim meals, and discusses the material life of cooking and cuisine in changing socio-economic environments

Consumption (sociology · Distribution (mathematics · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Geography · Hierarchy · Identity (music · Peasant · Political science · Social class · Social group · Social hierarchy · Social identity theory · Social science · Social status · Sociology · The Symbolic · Wage · African history and culture analysis · Anthropology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Psychology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology