Food in Traumatic Times
Women, Foodways and 'Polishness' During a Wartime 'Odyssey
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5377976 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Monica Janowski (0000-0002-7957-2153, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3-4 |
| Pages | 326-349 |
| Publication date | 2012-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Food and Foodways (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0740-9710 • E-ISSN: 1542-3484 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07409710.2012.715969 |
| OpenAlex | W2163250178 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 19 |
In this article I explore the pivotal role of food in holding together, projecting and re-imagining a lost world and identity in the context of extreme trauma and dislocation. I do this through the story of seven women deported by the Soviet Union from the eastern borderlands of Poland in 1940, who experienced an ‘odyssey’ through Russia, the Middle East, and Africa which ended in London in the late 1940s. I explore how for them, their success in approximating ‘proper’ food in this context acted as a kind of barometer indicating their success in maintaining identity, social life and kinship. In this traumatic context the connection between the way in which food is prepared and consumed and the maintenance of social and kin structure comes through very clearly, including in particular the role of bread as the central food symbolising ‘proper’ life. The nature of kinship as not only centred on the family which eats ‘proper meals’ together but as something ‘nested’ and culminating symbolically in the imagined community of the Polish nation is demonstrated in the consumption of food in larger-scale contexts, in army and refugee camps and in other communal contexts during the war and afterwards in the UK. I explore how snack foods, on the other hand, served to generate ‘identity extensions’ through eating new foods with people outside the Polish community. Finally, I explore the way in which food reflects the sometimes uneasy sense of identity experienced by younger deportees and second generation Poles in the UK, including the creation of new kinds of identity which are both founded in and expressed through new, hybrid ways of eating
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Consumption (sociology) · Context (archaeology) · Foodways · Identity (music) · Kinship · Refugee · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Gender Studies · History
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Memories, relationships and identity
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From potato to rice and beans
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |