Food for Thought: Transnational Contested Identities and Food Practices of Russian-Speaking Jewish Migrants in Israel and Germany - Softcover

Bernstein, Julia

 
9783593392523: Food for Thought: Transnational Contested Identities and Food Practices of Russian-Speaking Jewish Migrants in Israel and Germany
Softcover
ISBN 10: 3593392526 ISBN 13: 9783593392523
Verlag: Campus Verlag, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Russischsprachige Juden, die nach Deutschland oder Israel ausgewandert sind, leben in vielschichtigen sozialen Realitäten. Dazu gehört auch die Esskultur, die eine besondere Rolle für die Konstruktion von Identität spielen kann, wie Julia Bernstein zeigt. Ihre ethnografische Studie des Alltagslebens, von Lebensmitteln und Lebensmittelverpackungen bringt kulturelle, soziale und ökonomische Bedeutungen des früheren Lebens in der Sowjetunion und des gegenwärtigen Lebens in Israel und Deutschland zum Vorschein. Transnationale Bezüge, so stellt sich heraus, haben tragenden Anteil daran, die widersprüchlichen Lebenswirklichkeiten zu bewältigen.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Julia Bernstein, Kulturanthropologin und Künstlerin, ist derzeit wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin und Dozentin an der Fachhochschule Frankfurt.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1 Migration collages: Studying Russian-speaking Jews in Israel and Germany

The study focuses on migrants who are involved, by necessity, in reconstructing their cultural perceptions as well as finding and confirming their place in a new reality. The comparative investigation presented here was conducted in two different contexts-Germany and Israel-among Jewish immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union (SU) after the initiation of Perestroika. The study's principal aim is to examine the multiple affiliations of immigrants that were shaped and modified in these two different cultural and social contexts. This analysis highlights and illuminates the cosmological perceptions and self-definitions of migrants transported from the SU along with their own meaningful experiences and interpretation of key concepts and symbols (Golden 2002; Stonequist 1935, 1937). Undertaken as a project in cultural anthropology, this study aspires to highlight the sites of conjunction and contradictions between, on the one hand, the ideas and perceptions that evolved while living in the SU; and, on the other hand, the expectations of receiving societies, normative thinking, and everyday knowledge of dominant host society.

1.1 Migration and socio-cultural affiliations

One of the basic, central premises of the study is that the perceptions as well as the physical conditions of the individual are dynamic and subject to change. Therefore, identities of individual and collective affiliations also undergo changes. As, for example, in the foods selected and prepared by immigrants on their dining table. Hence, we will find that these food products symbolize being-Russian, Jewish, Israeli, German, educated, European and/or that they signal transnational practices of belonging to a certain social stratum.
In investigating the migrant experience, I assume that people do not bear or transport with them a self-contained completed culture, but rather there is fluid nature to cultural affiliations as they select and employ cultural elements that are integrated through involvement in special situations, states, or conditions of their existence (Bloch 1963; Boyarin 1994; Gudeman and Rivera 1990; Kalekin-Fishman 2000; Welz 1996, 1997, 1998). Hence, I assume that culture is created through dynamic dialogues as well as permanent changes and modifications, rather than being limited to preserving of stable habits and practices. Therefore, based on these assumptions, this study sought to understand how different affiliations of migrants-be they cultural Russian, European, ex-Soviet, Jewish and different Others-are constructed, modified, co-exist, and presented/performed in particular situations in response to needs within specific situations. Bodnar (1985) referred to this process of identity redefinition as transplantation.
Accordingly, analyses advanced in this study do not perceive participants through insulated categories, such as Jewish, Soviet, Russian or German, but rather as "doing being Jewish" (Inowlocki 2000, 175) or doing being-ex-Soviet, Russian, Israeli, or German-through their dynamic practices and everyday interactions. The findings demonstrate that multiple identities co-exist and often contradict one another in various ways: Interviewees speak Russian and act according to Russian cultural practices, but are offended if referred to as Russians; or, they consume pork and simultaneously feel themselves to be Jews, accept support by the social welfare system but perform elitist cultural habitus, invest significant energies and time over three days to prepare meals for a birthday celebration, but claim that food "has actually no meaning for spiritual life." In addition, participants in both contexts articulated affiliation with different collective and "imaginary communities" (Anderson 1991), often expressed through linguistic forms of "we" and "they." These uses were created, changed in situ, presented, confirmed, and performed in various manners. For example, self-referential terms nashi and svoi [lit. ours, ourselves, our own, Rus. approximated meaning as "people of our kind" or those who represent a unified "us"] were involved in a very dynamic and fluid process of doing being nashi that could be called nashi-zation. The meanings evolving in this process are presented throughout different chapters of this work.
Thus, the numerous examples of empirical evidence presented throughout this monograph demonstrate different uses and modified meanings of key cultural symbols in the Russian language.

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Verlag
Campus Verlag
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
3593392526
ISBN 13 
9783593392523
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
451
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Beltz Verlagsgruppe GmbH & Co. KG
info@campus.de

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