Food and the Iranian Diaspora

Amir Sayadabdi is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the Victoria University of Wellington. He is interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. He is the inaugural winner of the Neda Nobari Prize in Iranian Diaspora Studies, for the same work from which this book is drawn. He is also a board member of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS), and a member of the Editorial Collective of Commoning Ethnography.

• AcknowledgementsPrologueIntroduction: Diaspora, Identity, and the Everyday Politics of FoodFood(ways) and Diasporic IdentityNation, Gender, MemoryTheoretical FrameworkContextualising the Iranian DiasporaA Census Overview of Iranians of New ZealandFieldworkStructure of the BookPart 1: NationEveryday NationhoodChapter 1: Talking the Nation; Choosing the NationTalking the NationChoosing the NationChapter 2: Consuming the Nation; Performing the NationConsuming the NationPerforming the NationUnperforming the NationPart II: GenderWomen, Food, and Culinary CapitalMen, Food, and Cleft HabitusChapter 3: WomenPersian Culinary CapitalChapter 4: MenPart III: MemoryHome-building and NostalgiaHome and Memory‘Gharibi’ vs. ‘Ghorbat’: Not Feeling at Home vs. Not Being at Home in the Iranian Diasporic ContextGhorbat from the Bourdieusian PerspectiveChapter 5: Individual MemoryChapter 6: Collective MemoryMuharram, Ashura, and Nazri RitualsNazri-pazoonSelective Remembrance of an Idealised HomeConclusion: Food, Migration, and the Making of Diasporic WorldsReferencesIndex

In this richly observed ethnography, Amir Sayadabdi traces how Iranian New Zealanders build home through the sensorial work of cooking and eating. His incisive analysis reveals the ways sharing meals sustains community while reshaping gender relations in the kitchen. An essential contribution to scholarship on diaspora, food, and migration.