Full Description
Food and the Iranian Diaspora critically analyses everyday life within the Iranian diaspora in New Zealand, with a focus on the generative role of food in the construction of a 'diasporic Iranianness'. It shows how different aspects of identity, in particular gender and national identity, undergo reconfiguration and reconstruction within Iranians' transnational and diasporic arenas of social interaction and modes of belonging. As the first ethnographic work on the Iranian diaspora in New Zealand, it uncovers how the community sustains cultural continuity, challenges exclusion and creates new forms of connection.
Amir Sayadabdi offers a three-part examination of how food practices shape and express diasporic identities through nation, gender and memory. Placing rich ethnographic research in dialogue with Bourdieu's theories of habitus, capital and practice, he spotlights how everyday acts of cooking and eating become forms of belonging and resistance.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Introduction: Diaspora, Identity, and the Everyday Politics of Food
Food(ways) and Diasporic Identity
Nation, Gender, Memory
Theoretical Framework
Contextualising the Iranian Diaspora
A Census Overview of Iranians of New Zealand
Fieldwork
Structure of the Book
Part 1: Nation
Everyday Nationhood
Chapter 1: Talking the Nation; Choosing the Nation
Talking the Nation
Choosing the Nation
Chapter 2: Consuming the Nation; Performing the Nation
Consuming the Nation
Performing the Nation
Unperforming the Nation
Part II: Gender
Women, Food, and Culinary Capital
Men, Food, and Cleft Habitus
Chapter 3: Women
Persian Culinary Capital
Chapter 4: Men
Part III: Memory
Home-building and Nostalgia
Home and Memory
'Gharibi' vs. 'Ghorbat': Not Feeling at Home vs. Not Being at Home in the Iranian Diasporic Context
Ghorbat from the Bourdieusian Perspective
Chapter 5: Individual Memory
Chapter 6: Collective Memory
Muharram, Ashura, and Nazri Rituals
Nazri-pazoon
Selective Remembrance of an Idealised Home
Conclusion: Food, Migration, and the Making of Diasporic Worlds
References
Index
