Oppression and empowerment: domestic foodwork and culinary capital among diasporic Iranian women in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

This paper examines evolutions of domestic foodwork and associated status among diasporic Iranian women in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand. Drawing on feminist food studies, as well as on Bourdieu’s notion of cultural and symbolic capitals, we examine the two-fold, oppression-empowerment aspects of domestic foodwork, specifically its transformation from a socio-cultural obligation in the origin home to a means of agentic liberation and social empowerment in diaspora. Furthermore, we explore how this transformation is strategically negotiated by some women to successfully generate positions of enhanced respect, status, and private influence both within the domestic sphere and the wider diasporic Iranian community in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Keywords:

• Gender
• migration/diaspora
• culinary capital
• Iranian diaspora
• Aotearoa/New Zealand
• anthropology of food

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank our reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and invaluable feedback. We would also like to thank Dr. Alison Loveridge who commented on this work in an earlier format and supported this research every step of the way. Many thanks also to Professor Anne Murcott and Dr. Lynn Harbottle for their insightful comments which improved this work in innumerable ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amir Sayadabdi

Amir Sayadabdi is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is interested in studies of gender (and sexuality), migration/diaspora, and food.

Peter J. Howland

Peter J. Howland is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Massey University, New Zealand. He has long-standing research interests in gambling, ethnicity, and more latterly on wine production, consumption, and tourism and their role in the evolving constructions of middle-class identity, distinction, leisure, elective sociality, rurality and urbanity, and reflexive individuality. He is the editor of Social, Cultural and Economic Impacts of Wine (Routledge, 2014); co-editor of Wine, Terroir and Utopia: Making New Worlds (Routledge, 2019); and editor of Wine and The Gift (Routledge, forthcoming).