Year: 2025 | Month: January | Volume: 12 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 279-287
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20250136
Food and Rituals: Narratives of Food Consumed by Assamese Menstruating Women
Dr. Mitoo Das
Assistant Professor, Discipline of Anthropology School of Social Sciences Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi
ABSTRACT
Food and its consumption carry with them, not only physiological meanings but have equal cultural connotations. It is so mundane an element in our daily lives that we do not realize the intensity with which it influences us socially, culturally and politically. Food, the way it is created, served, consumed and conserved, has not just health and nutritional ideals associated with it, but are also manifested in symbolically giving meaning to one’s identity in a society. This paper will mainly deal with food which is ritualistically consumed during menarche by young Assamese girls as part of their procedural and symbolic manifestation of menstrual rituals of isolation demonstrating the beliefs associated to the concepts of purity and pollution. It will also delve into the kind of food Assamese girls/women are advised to follow during their menstrual lives and attempt to thus place food as an agency to exhibit the running of a culture and at the same time dig deeper into the subtle meanings that food holds in the carrying forward of one’s identity and position in society. The paper will examine the above through the ideas of Mary Douglas (based on purity and pollution), Clifford Ceertz (based on interpretive and symbolic premises), Victor Turner (based on symbolism) and Judith Butler (based on gender performativity) and demonstrate how food has cultural significance in the way it is managed by society.
Keywords: Food, Rituals, Cultural implications, Symbolism, Performativity.
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