Food and the Iranian Diaspora : Embodying Nation, Gender and Memory in New Zealand

Offers an ethnographic exploration of Iranian diasporic identities through the lens of food.

Food and the Iranian Diaspora critically analyses everyday life within the Iranian diaspora in New Zealand, with a focus on the generative role of food in the construction of a ‘diasporic Iranianness’. It shows how different aspects of identity, in particular gender and national identity, undergo reconfiguration and reconstruction within Iranians’ transnational and diasporic arenas of social interaction and modes of belonging. As the first ethnographic work on the Iranian diaspora in New Zealand, it uncovers how the community sustains cultural continuity, challenges exclusion and creates new forms of connection. Amir Sayadabdi offers a three-part examination of how food practices shape and express diasporic identities through nation, gender and memory. Placing rich ethnographic research in dialogue with Bourdieu’s theories of habitus, capital and practice, he spotlights how everyday acts of cooking and eating become forms of belonging and resistance.