At Christmas We Don't Like Pork, Just Like The MacCabees
Festive Food and Religious Identity at the Protestant Christmas Picnic in Hoi An
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2390927 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nir Avieli (0000-0002-6575-0756, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University, Israel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 219-241 |
| Publication date | 2009-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Material Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1359183509103063 |
| OpenAlex | W2135976929 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 23 |
Every Christmas, the tiny Protestant community of Hoi An (central Vietnam) congregates and marks the day with a service, a short ceremony and a communal picnic in the church yard. In this article, based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the town since 1998, the author explores the meanings of the culinary features of the event. By analysing the dishes and eating arrangements at the picnic, he shows how differing facets of the participants' identity - the religious, the ethnic and the regional - are exposed, defined and negotiated. He argues that, while the eating arrangements represent ethnic Vietnamese identity, the dishes themselves hint at foreignness and `double marginality': not only of a Christian minority among Buddhists but also of Protestants among Catholics. The author's findings suggest that the complicated relationship between nation-states and marginal religious groups, as well as among members of differing religious communities within the same ethnic group, are often expressed in subtle practices that are easily overlooked by outsiders but are meaningful and evocative for the participants. The discussion focuses on the meaning of the culinary arena as a sphere of socio-religious negotiation, especially within politically authoritative contexts
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Ceremony · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Geography · Identity (music · Meaning (existential · Negotiation · Patron saint · Picnic · Political science · Protestantism · Religious community · Religious identity · SAINT · Social science · Sociology · Vietnamese · Yard · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Annual Bibliography of Works About Life Writing, 2009-2010
Chapter Two
Beyond the Nature-Culture Frontier
Food and Power in the Middle East and the Mediterranean
Money, memory objects and material practices in the everyday conduct of inter-ethnic marriages in Indonesia
An emotional economy of mundane objects
The ritual process
Cooking, Cuisine and Class
Understanding Vietnam
Re-thinking the Sea in Vietnamese History
Food Practices Among Sephardic Immigrants in Contemporary France
Eating and Fasting for God in Sufi Tradition
Cosmic Jaws
Religion and Food
The Sacred
Food, self and identity
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Primitive Classification (Routledge Revivals)
The Raw and the Rotten
Whitebread Protestants
Consumption, Prostitution, and Reproduction
Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia
New York Jews and Chinese Food
The Invention of Thanksgiving
The Anthropology of Food and Eating
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2023 (14) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |