When food cultures meet. Ethnographic analysis of belongings and positionings.

The displacement of human beings is always accompanied by the movement of things and practices which travel with them. This is an obvious statement that indeed leads to interesting studies on the material culture involved by people’s mobility. Within this culture are food habits, objects of numerous scholars’ researches often focusing on culinary changes (or resistances) linked to migration paths. Far for being the only issue at stake when studying migrant’s food practices – moreover frequently assumed as originally static prior to migration –, this matter is likely to overshadow other significant dynamics. Such as those which occur when supposedly different food cultures meet, thus leading to the mobilization of belongings by groups who want to take a specific position toward one another. My paper is aimed at analysing this encounter. The assumption is that it shapes a space which corresponds to a tertium quid, that is a dimension where not only the boundaries of food cultures fade, proving of an original indeterminacy and interchangeability of practices, but also where individuals constantly change their reciprocal position depending on the perspective of the gaze upon them.

To show these dynamics, I will present the ethnographic data stemmed from my doctoral research about the culinary practices of a group of Moroccan migrant women living in Milan hinterland. I will support my presentation with visual materials collected during an eighteen month fieldwork which included observations and interviews inside homes as well as in public events such as an Arab cooking class.