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Tables of solidarity: Improvisation and Moral positioning at the Yeryüzü Sofrası
Abstract
As a catalyst and communicative vehicle in activism, the language of food and food sharing carries moral weight and common ground. This paper, which is part of a larger ethnographic project on food activism and utopias in Turkey, focuses on the Yeryüzü Sofrası (Earth Tables), Ramadan iftars of the Anti-Capitalist Muslims of Istanbul. The Yeryüzü Sofrası gained visibility during the Gezi protests of 2013, which coincided with the month of Ramadan. Street “tables” occupied great lengths of Istanbul’s Istiklal Caddesi, bringing together what Nilüfer Göle described as the “divine and the cool.” With the ground as tabletop, participants sat cross-legged across each other to reach for bread, olives, and other foods brought for the meal. These iftars were defined by their stance against neoliberal incursions into public space, and by their stance of modesty against the opulent meals held in five star hotels. Most importantly, the meals were heralded as uniting secular Turks with pious Turks in an innovative habitus. Since 2013, the “tables” have become itinerant public solidarity events between the Anticapitalist Muslims and various other urban social movements and minority groups. The term, yeryüzü sofrası has also been co-opted by other groups outside of the Ramadan month. The organization of iftars in the ensuing years offers an opportunity to examine the fluid performance of moral positioning around the meals. In particular I focus on the improvisational nature of the Yeryüzü Sofrası and on the way the rules of visible adjacency become formulated differently in settings such as endangered urban gardens, Alevi neighborhoods, and central public squares. Setting up of meals involved both emulation and dismissal of traditional categories like hospitality, and leisure practices such as picnics. Indeed, the role that food has played in protest has been noted before. In her study of the Occupy Wall street kitchen, Maggie Dickinson pointed out the way in which “food structured a set of social relationships that constituted the movement.” She describes the manner in which daily activities were shaped by what food showed up and which volunteers were available. Just as food was offered as a gift in Zucotti Park, so the organizers of the Yeryüzü Sofrası invited participants and viewers to a modest, equalizing, floor table to call attention to extravagance, inequality and asymmetry.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Folklore/Folklife