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Cuisine and Citizenship: Food and Embodiment in Moroccan Society
Abstract
Moroccan cuisine is iconic throughout the world, a selling point for the country’s tourist industry and a hallmark of Moroccan identity. Yet Moroccan cuisine as it is experienced in everyday contacts is changing. This paper examines how globalization has altered the consumption of food in Morocco, and in turn, the links between food and Moroccan identity. In particular, I attend to changing gendered meanings of food production and consumption, and concomitant transformations of body image and female identity. While the domestic/public dichotomy is still salient in associations of women’s space with domestic space, distance from food preparation is increasingly a mark of social distinction. Among both working and non-working women, Moroccan female identity is increasingly divorced from associations with the time consuming preparation and consumption of traditional cuisine in favor of regimes of time saving and productivity. An increase in wage labor, altered work schedules, the influx of supermarkets, and the decline of the extended family unit, are all contributing to the changing meanings of cuisine, as well as changing forms of embodiment, in everyday life. Moroccan identity is increasingly associated with consumption, which is encouraged by media and government. Yet the “convenience” of pre-prepared foods additionally has negative health incomes, resulting in an increase in diabetes, heart disease, and other “lifestyle” diseases. The nutrition transition has been accompanied by rising obesity rates, and an estimated forty percent of the female population is overweight or obese. Simultaneously, one out of ten women suffer from chronic energy deficiency, and stunted growth among children, though in decline over the past twenty years, is still common. Because of vast socioeconomic disparities and standards of living, generalizations about Moroccan women should be made with care. Yet from city to country, processes of globalization are altering the gendered embodiment of the Moroccan female citizen. Based on anthropological field research in Morocco, this paper attempts to interrogate globalization’s effects on cuisine, gender, and national identity.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
None