essay
Culture enters through the kitchen: women, food, and social boundaries in rural Greece
Gender & power in rural Greece • Princeton, N.j. • Published In 1986 • Pages: 195-214
By: Dubisch, Jill.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
In contrast to the general belief in Greece and elsewhere that pollution evolving from female sexuality and bodily processes are both indicators and reasons for women's subordination and inferior status in the society, this article takes a somewhat different approach to the oppositions of male/female, culture/nature, and purity/pollution by analyzing instead the ways that women function as controllers of pollution, both their own and that of others, and act as transformers of natural products (foods) and processes (food preparation) into cultural ones. Dubisch examines in detail the concept of body symbolism, the symbolism of pollution, and social boundaries and proposes a relationship between the body (particularly the female body), the house, and social order. To analyze this relationship the author explores the connections between pollution, boundary maintenance, the house and kitchen, the role of food, and the symbolism of the body (pp. 195-196).
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Gender status
- Household
- Purification and atonement
- Ethnoanatomy
- Sexuality
- Gender roles and issues
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Greeks
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2003
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Europe
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Southeastern Europe
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 2002
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- no date
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- not specified
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Cycladic Islands, Greece
- NotesAdditional notes
- Jill Dubisch
- For bibliographical references see source 31: [Dubisch]
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 86003183
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Greece