Edible Traditions: Pakhala and the (Re)Construction of Neo-Odia Identity in the Era of Hashtags

Edible Traditions: Pakhala and the (Re)Construction of Neo-Odia Identity in the Era of Hashtags

Khusi Pattanayak
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 11
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-6217-1.ch004
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Abstract

The food that we consume everyday becomes part of our identity and existence. As we move and relocate, we bring our traditional food with us, which undergoes numerous transformations in the new land. Traditional cuisines symbolize racial and ethnic distinctiveness and add flavors to the childhood memories. Traditional food not only provides necessary nourishment to the body, but also helps communities stay together and create transnational bonds. One such example of gastronomical legacy is Pakhala, an Odia cuisine prepared from cooked rice that is soaked in fermented water or fresh water. This chapter will engage in decoding the journey of this humble summer food from the coastal state of Odisha (India) to being the poster child of Odia identity on social media and beyond. The evolution of intangible heritage as Pakhala is a great example of how cultures change their form and create new discourses on tradition while bridging the gap between past and future.
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Food As Heritage

In their essay ‘Food & Foodways as Cultural Heritage’ Giovine and Brulotte (2016) make an interesting observation about heritage. According to them, the emphasis on the concept of heritage is a direct result of European imperial expansions. These colonial programs that began as innocent exploration or business diversification plans eventually resulted in formation of colonies and witnessed dismantling of socio-economic fabric of local cultures. Thus, heritage became the foundation of both tangible and intangible goods that the community or society inherited from their ancestors and preserved it “in the present” and passed it “on to the future”. These “goods” turned into “mediators”, connecting devices, which bound the members of a specific society “through space and time” acting as “referential touchstone for a group’s self-identification”. Studied from this perspective, food with its ability to preserve gastronomical tradition is imbued with cultural symbolism and remains as one of the prominent indicators of cultural heritage.

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