12: Food and Power with Nir Avieli

Jewish History Matters

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Nir Avieli discusses his recent book Food and Power: A Culinary Ethnography of Israel, and why food matters for understanding contemporary Israel: Who lays claim to “owning” various foods and cuisines, what it means to fight over food, and the relationship of food, culture, and power.

• Read the introduction to Food and Power: “The Hummus Wars”
• Purchase Food and Power on Amazon

Nir Avieli is Associate Professor at Ben Gurion University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He is a cultural anthropologist interested mainly in food and in tourism.

Food and Power a fascinating and exciting exploration of the foodways of contemporary Israelis. As he argues, what we eat is something that we do not always think about deeply, but there is a great deal to unpack. In the course of the book, we see how Israeli Jews construct their identity through food as well as negotiate their relationship with populations like the native Palestinian Arab population, Europe, and migrant workers. On the whole, he argues that there is a close relationship between the ways in which Israeli Jews consume and create food, and the ambivalent relationship with power in Israeli and Jewish history.

Some other books and topics discussed in this episode:

• Miri Regev’s Culture War (NYT, Oct. 2016)
• Janet Siskind, “The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality.” Critique of Anthropology 12, no. 2 (1992): 167–191.
• The “hummus wars”
  • “Give Chickpeas A Chance: Why Hummus Unites, And Divides, The Mideast” (NPR Morning Edition, July 2016)
  • Matthew Shaer, “The Politics of Hummus” (New York Magazine, Mar. 2012)
• Yotam Ottolenghi, Jerusalem
  • Ronit Vered, “Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi Talk Jerusalem, Recipes and Passports” (Haaretz, Dec. 2013)