Feeding Iran by Rose Wellman

Author:Rose Wellman [Wellman, Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Comparative Religion, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Ethnic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies, Agriculture & Food
ISBN: 9780520376861
Google: 7i0nEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2021-06-15T05:32:52+00:00

Sharing the “Right Food”

For those I interviewed in Fars-Abad and beyond, kinship is reckoned not only through bodily substances such as blood but also through the channeling of vital immaterial and sacred qualities between the bodies and souls of kin. It is thus both material and spiritual. It is configured, moreover, through ongoing pious and ritual acts such as food sharing. Here, kinship expands or contracts not only according to evaluations of shared blessing, trust, and rightness, but also through the creation and maintenance of these qualities in the bodies and souls of kin.

Food is a key means of this physio-sacred transformation, not only of the self but also of the family. Sharing and consuming the “right” food is central to the ongoing work of cultivating the “physio-sacred” family, its kindred spirit (ruh), and of delineating those who are closest to its intimate and trusted core. Food, together with prayer, (re)constitutes and demarcates (and can also destroy) the family as a whole. The inner space of the household and its thresholds are permeable and susceptible to outside harm (such as the evil eye).

For my Basiji hosts, the family and household are also susceptible to the failing morals of post-Revolution, postwar society and to Western “cultural invasion.” In the context of dangers such as drug addiction, family fighting, and moral decay, food (and prayer) become vital ways of maintaining Islamic purity and harmonious and halal family relationships. After all, food can be wielded to incorporate the “right” qualities of purity and morality into kin, but it can also be a means of channeling harm, illness, and strife into the pure inner moral core of the family, embodied by the sofreh. In the following chapter I turn to the commemoration of martyrs in Iran to explore the literal flow of these kinship-related substances and pious acts between the intimate spaces of the home and the nation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.