Being Moroccan abroad. Objects and culinary practices in women subjectivation

Abstract

Abstract The definition of the self is a complex process which unfolds in everyday life though the use of objects and the performance of practices. Among others, food and culinary objects and practices contribute to the material foundation of subjectivation. Starting from De Certeau’s analysis of everyday life (1984) and adopting Warnier’s praxeological approach to subjectivation, our article aims at studying how two Moroccan women living in Milan’s suburbs make themselves through the materiality of food and related practices in a migration context. They move in peculiar ways among the constraints imposed both by the new local context and the country of origin food cultures. Through everyday food practices, women define a proper Moroccan “style” (Gell, 1998) made of diverse life stories as well as of an embodied collective memory anchored to materiality; they witness of different manners of being Moroccan, and of being it abroad.