Food as the Holographic Condensation of Life in Sri Lankan Rituals

Daele, Wim Van

doi:10.1080/00141844.2017.1314309

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The origin of the name milk mother may be unclear, but it provides a clue to how the frame, which is crucial for the linking of the women's identities, is constructed. 1 An exception is a number of anthropological studies on food: Beck 1969, Nichter 1987, Nordstrom 1989, Ladwig 2012, and more specifically for Sri Lanka, Kapferer 1997and van Daele (2018, 2017, 2013a, 2013b. 4 See Langer 2007, 6-7 for a more detailed description.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Transformative Power of Food: The “Milk Mothers” in Sri Lankan Buddhism

Langer

2019

Material Religion

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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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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gombrich (1971) wrote a short article on the topic andObeyesekere (1984, 294) devotes just one paragraph of his impressive volume on the Cult of the goddess Pattini to the ritual.More recentlyVan Daele (2013a, 2013b, 2017 wrote extensively on milk, milk rice and the milk boiling ceremony in Sri Lanka but does not engage with the milk mothers.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Transformative Power of Food: The “Milk Mothers” in Sri Lankan Buddhism

Langer

2019

Material Religion

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“…However, given that ‘machinic assemblage’ is a pleonasm—the two terms being similar—it remains sufficient to conceptualize food as an assemblage, while pointing out that it is a particularly powerful one. Food’s machinic capacity emerges relationally, and it is precisely because food is enacted by an exceptionally wide range of entanglements that it becomes such an intense and condense agent in shaping human and more-than-human life and organization (Van Daele, 2018b ). This assemblage is continually in flux throughout its shifting entanglements and becomings as permeated by the creative forces of immanent desire, yet it also entails stabilizations.…”

Section: Foregrounding the Generative And Creative Dynamics Of Food/e...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Entangled Assemblages

Daele

2022

Found Sci

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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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“…Here, I am thinking of a lively dialogue between Venkatesan, Bear, Harvey, Lazar, Rival and Simone on infrastructure () – as well as Haines’ () work on the ‘affective power of infrastructure’. In a very different way, Van Daele's () work on food's status as a ‘holographic condensation of life’ in Sri Lankan ritual seems to develop similar lines of thought about persons and their relations to collectivities in the contemporary world.…”

Section: The Rise Of Networked Personhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

Hughes

2019

Soc Anthropol

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In 2018, social anthropology finds itself increasingly concerned with its technical, legal and political conditions of possibility. The long‐term effects of austerity, financialisation and the technological transformation of media on teaching, research and publishing have led to intense struggles over the labour and property regimes underpinning the discipline. In responding to these challenges, anthropologists seem to be re‐conceptualising their own personhood and labour through the diverse conceptualisations of their interlocutors. However, it is also important to remember what makes social anthropology and its unique professional challenges but a small facet of a larger human condition. By way of conclusion, I offer kinship (the public's constitutive other) as one potential means of grappling with the limitations of social anthropology's own publicity.

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Food as the Holographic Condensation of Life in Sri Lankan Rituals

Cited by 9 publications

References 23 publications

The Transformative Power of Food: The “Milk Mothers” in Sri Lankan Buddhism

The Transformative Power of Food: The “Milk Mothers” in Sri Lankan Buddhism

Entangled Assemblages

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

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