The Kitchen as a Modernizing Space: Palestinian Women in Israel

ABSTRACT

This article looks at the ways by which domestic food practices enable professional Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel to position themselves as modern and entitled to participation and social acceptance in Israeli society, if only as individuals. In this process, domestic kitchens become spaces for female agency. Two sets of culinary capital are accumulated – the traditional and the modern – each involving a different relation to food production and consumption. While the former sustains Palestinian tradition in an altered and commodified form, the latter equips Palestinian citizens of Israel with the necessary cultural capital to participate in public spaces. Such a process requires the women to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. In return, they seek recognition of the local Palestinian community as distinctive from that in the West Bank.

KEYWORDS:

• Palestinian citizens of Israel
• food
• culinary capital
• identity
• professional women
• food practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Liora Gvion is a professor of sociology. Her areas of expertise are the sociology of food and the sociology of the body. She has been studying Palestinian kitchens in Israel for over twenty years. She is currently working on social relationships embedded in the production of voice and on veganism.

Notes

1 All activities related to food production and consumption in the domestic or public spheres.

2 The 1948 war when Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes and villages by Israeli military troops.