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Vibrantly Entangled in Sri Lanka: Food as the Polyrhythmic and Polyphonic Assemblage of Life

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Wim Van Daele
Wim Van Daele
Wim Van Daele
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Creatively operationalizing Claude Lévi-Strauss’ predicament that food is good to think with, I initiate a methodological conceptualization of food by exploring the ways in which it is apt to study Sri Lankan domestic and collective village life. Food is approached as an assemblage that is an emergent resultant of heterogeneous aspects with which it is deeply entangled and by way of which it turns into a potent agent shaping life. More specifically, I explore the vibrancy of these different components that co-create the overall soundscape of food that as such becomes the conductor of Sri Lankan life. Food shapes domestic life by way of its preparation and consumption, and through its cultivation also conducts the collective rhythms at the village level. The conceptualization of food as an assemblage seeks to develop it as a methodology that opens up for a holistic integration and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Vibrantly Entangled in Sri Lanka: Food
as the Polyrhythmic and Polyphonic Assemblage of Life
Wim Van Daele
1
Published online: 10 November 2016
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract Creatively operationalizing Claude Le
´vi-Strauss’ predicament that food is good
to think with, I initiate a methodological conceptualization of food by exploring the ways
in which it is apt to study Sri Lankan domestic and collective village life. Food is
approached as an assemblage that is an emergent resultant of heterogeneous aspects with
which it is deeply entangled and by way of which it turns into a potent agent shaping life.
More specifically, I explore the vibrancy of these different components that co-create the
overall soundscape of food that as such becomes the conductor of Sri Lankan life. Food
shapes domestic life by way of its preparation and consumption, and through its cultivation
also conducts the collective rhythms at the village level. The conceptualization of food as
an assemblage seeks to develop it as a methodology that opens up for a holistic integration
and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Keywords Food Sri Lanka Assemblages Rhythmanalysis
Stating that food is central to human life and organization is saying the obvious. Yet, apart
from statements that food can be used as a lens or prism to study a myriad of other topics
(e.g. Counihan 1999: 6; Counihan and Van Esterik 2008: 2) the theoretical and conceptual
implications of this centrality have hardly been taken seriously. In this paper, I will initiate
an embryonic conceptualization of food that takes its central role in shaping life seriously
and that aims at developing food holistically as both a topic of study as well as a
methodological approach, inspired by the famous Le
´vi-Straussian predicament that food is
something good to think with. Food then helps to explore seemingly disparate and
heterogeneous phenomena whereby their interrelations get teased out in novel ways.
&Wim Van Daele
Wimvandaele.x@gmail.com; w.v.daele@sai.uio.no
1
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1091, Blindern, 0317 Oslo,
Norway
123
Found Sci (2018) 23:85–102
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-016-9509-4
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Assemblage theory suggests cultural meanings emerge from a process of multiple elements (Canniford & Shankar, 2013), and understanding can be gained by exploring the mechanisms and networks that influence one another. In the context of food, interlinkages can range from those with global reach to those which are simple and intimate processes between individuals and objects (van Daele, 2018). In our study we explore the processes by which consumers may adapt their usage of functional foods based on their interactions with other human actors, such as other consumers and doctors. ...
... Given the exploratory nature of this research project to capture rich descriptions of how functional food and wellbeing intersect, purposeful recruitment method was adopted to strategically recruit informationrich participants who by their nature and substance will illuminate the research question under exploration (Creswell & Poth, 2017;Denzin & Lincoln, 2017;Patton, 2014). As a common recruiting method in qualitative research, purposeful recruitment has been traditionally adopted in interpretivist consumer research (e.g., Belk, Wallendorf, & Sherry, 1989;Fournier, 1998), and extended to exploratory qualitative research in wider areas of social research (e.g., Kuswara, Laws, Kremer, Hesketh, & Campbell, 2016;McCafferty et al., 2019;Zhang, Bécares, Chandola, & Callery, 2015). ...
... Both consumer and doctor interview participants presented a mix of ages and genders, and consumer focus groups were split into younger groups aged 25-40 years and older groups aged 41-55 years. By applying prespecified recruitment criteria tailored to the research question, the purposeful recruitment strategy in this project allowed the researchers to achieve an in-depth understanding from information-rich participants, while still maintain maximum variation of age, gender, health concerns, income level, and occupations among the target populations (both consumers and doctors) under exploration (Belk, 2007;Creswell & Poth, 2017). ...
Fortifying Wellbeing: How Chinese Consumers and Doctors Navigate the Role of Functional Foods
Article
  • May 2021
  • APPETITE
China's rapidly developing economy has seen an increase in medical problems commonly associated with affluent lifestyles such as increases in metabolic diseases and digestive issues. One response to this problem is an increase in the amount of functional foods currently available, which may take a Western food form, or be more closely associated with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This research seeks to understand how functional food and wellbeing intersect in order to better understand how consumers perceive the complex construct of wellbeing, and their agency in its creation. Interviews and Focus Group Interviews were undertaken in Shanghai, China; with consumers who self-identified as having health concerns, and with Doctors trained in Western Medicine and in TCM. Using an iterative process, the primary objective was to holistically examine how consumers navigate the role of functional foods in relation to their wellbeing. Our findings reveal three broad intersecting themes: (1) self-managed therapy using functional foods; (2) building trust with knowledge sharing; and (3) the importance of functional food heuristics. Functional food was not simply considered to be food with an added benefit, but also a cultural symbol of agency over one's wellness. These findings are discussed and implications for both policy makers and marketers are deliberated.
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... Moreover, the emergent wholes are not reducible to the sum of their parts (as in a mixture), but the parts that act on each other are rather creating a new resulting expression (as a new entanglement), open to ongoing transformation (DeLanda, 2006(DeLanda, :4-5, 2016, as in the breaking and grating of the coconut so as to prepare coconut milk. The parts are not effaced into a seamless whole, but continue to exert their (partially altered) actions within the heterogeneous assemblage (Van Daele, 2018a). The agency of the assemblage is thus emergent from the parts while being different from any of the parts alone (Bennett, 2010:24). ...
Entangled Assemblages
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2022
  • Found Sci
Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simple statement, this article first introduces the approach to food/eating as an assemblage enacted by various heterogeneous components, and further develops it by engaging with actor network theory and material semiotics. Thereafter the focus turns to ‘entanglement’, as inspired by quantum physics, to elicit the basic dynamics of the entanglement of food and more-than-human beings, conceived of as involving mutual and differential becomings within and among assemblages. The article illustrates these entangled becomings by drawing upon examples from Sri Lanka, which in an intercultural philosophical fashion serve to establish an articulation (in the sense of a connection) between the proposed abstract approach to food and some basic premises of Buddhism and Ayurveda, a South Asian health system. Overall, the article crafts a conceptual toolbox and performs ontological groundwork wherein food and human beings as entangled assemblages provide a productive, refined, and sensitive research apparatus for the intimate study of more-than-human life and organization while also spurring novel theorizations through food/eating.
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The Transformative Power of Food: The “Milk Mothers” in Sri Lankan Buddhism
Article
  • Oct 2019
This article examines the role of food in the religious cosmology of Sri Lankan Buddhists, combining textual and ethnographic research and drawing on original material, including untranslated pamphlets and interviews. Looking at food as an agent rather than an instrument reveals a creative and transformative power that is tangible in individual ritual contexts. One such context is the offering of dishes rich in milk to seven “milk mothers,” who are representatives of the Buddhist goddess Pattini. Despite its great popularity this ritual has so far received little scholarly attention. The milk mothers are often invited in fulfilment of a vow to Pattini who is associated with fertility, childbirth and childhood diseases, but also more generally with prosperity and health. The article demonstrates how milk is crucial for the success of this popular ritual as it creates the necessary ritual frame and, from an ayurvedic perspective, has the power to transform mothers into milk mothers.
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Food as the Holographic Condensation of Life in Sri Lankan Rituals
Article
  • Apr 2017
This paper seeks to elaborate the dynamics through which food acquires potency in shaping human life and organisation as it takes shape in enacting ritual transformation. I argue that whereas life and various existential concerns get condensed from the fringes of the social order into ritual, food further holographically condenses the existential concerns of life with which it is entangled as an assemblage. As such, it turns into a centripetal force in ritual by constituting a means that enables ritual and somatic transformation to materialize in the matter of food and thus in helping to render ritual effective. To grasp this complex process we will look at the basic dynamic of holographic condensation throughout the different ways in which various foods ritually enact the regeneration of life in the astrological New Year and the Sātuwe anti-sorcery healing rite in a Sinhalese Buddhist village in the North-Western province of Sri Lanka.
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Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology
Book
  • Jun 1982
The preparation, serving and eating of food are common features of all human societies, and have been the focus of study for numerous anthropologists - from Sir James Frazer onwards - from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. It is in the context of this previous anthropological work that Jack Goody sets his own observations on cooking in West Africa. He criticises those approaches which overlook the comparative historical dimension of culinary, and other, cultural differences that emerge in class societies, both of which elements he particularly emphasises in this book. The central question that Professor Goody addresses here is why a differentiated 'haute cuisine' has not emerged in Africa, as it has in other parts of the world. His account of cooking in West Africa is followed by a survey of the culinary practices of the major Eurasian societies throughout history - ranging from Ancient Egypt, Imperial Rome and medieval China to early modern Europe - in which he relates the differences in food preparation and consumption emerging in these societies to differences in their socio-economic structures, specifically in modes of production and communication. He concludes with an examination of the world-wide rise of 'industrial food' and its impact on Third World societies, showing that the ability of the latter to resist cultural domination in food, as in other things, is related to the nature of their pre-existing socio-economic structures. The arguments presented here will interest all social scientists and historians concerned with cultural history and social theory.
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