流动的味觉观：迁居彝人的饮食通感、“家乡”体验与记忆认同

受人类学理论的“感官转向”“物质转向”等交叉影响,饮食人类学研究更加关注到食物怎样在跨地区、跨文化和跨民族交流中积极塑造个体或群体的身份、信仰、健康,乃至整个社群的结构转型等问题。通过对离开故乡、迁居外地的彝人的饮食个案研究,重点探讨民族传统饮食与社会记忆如何在流动语境中创造出一种由饮食通感锁定的“味觉观”。对流动的味觉观的民族志研究可帮助我们深入理解全球化背景下由饮食文化引出的文化建构、族群边界、文化审美、道德区分等问题。

Chechnya conflict Traveling Gustemologies: Synesthesia, Homeland, and Memory Identity among the Migrant Yi

Influenced by the“sensory turn”,“material turn”and so forth in anthropology,anthropological food studies have drawn more attention to how food may actively shape one s identities,beliefs,and notions of health,as well as reflect or take on social transformations in various interterritorial,interethnic,and intercultural contexts.This paper examines how the traditional ethnic diet and memories of food have created synesthetic experiences in migrant contexts,and have shaped what Sutton calls“gustemology”that is central to the understanding of identity and wellbeing for the migrant Yi people who are or have once been away from their homeland.It suggests that further ethnographic studies on the sensory experience of food may help broaden our views of food and globalization with regard to questions such as cultural construction,ethnic boundaries,cultural aesthetics,and moral distinction.Traveling gustatory companions make a soothingly“sense-able”pleasure to the people concerned,since these ingredients are of local-ecological significance to these Yi migrants whose social lives channeled by foodways have been practically embodied.People cook these ingredients in the new environment,present culinary skills in front of fellow villagers,and consume these foods together in festive moments.When they comment on the difference of home soil and water,the odor of organic eggs,the symbolic nature of the spices,among others,their narratives tie strands of cultural experiences and skills that are profoundly shaped by rural subsistence and domestic practices.Furthermore,the ways they evaluate the“thickness”and“pureness”of the mailed or brought ingredients suggest their affective and emotional dependence on feeding,nurturance,and reciprocity that characterize the familial and broader social connection,and therefore one s felt attachment to his or her genealogy and roots.Thus,the expectation of,and meta-comment on,these traditional foods interestingly reveal a microcosm of a multisensory world that is also of indexical and moral significance.Gustemology,as both an analytical tool and a topic of its own right,had better be grasped as a plural gustemologies,because it unravels our senses,feelings,memories,ideas and meanings surrounding food in a rather intricate way.As argued in this paper,the taste of traditional Yi food is nurtured in a local environment with multisensory channels,deployed in a culturally elaborate space,and grounded in one s embodied memory.These profoundly influence the ways migrant Yi understand questions like what kinds of food taste/smell/look good,how to consume food properly,with whom the food gets to be exchanged,and so forth.The intimate and fluid gustemological experiences can thus become particularly effective in the migrant/travelling context where Yi of diverse backgrounds are encouraged,sometimes compelled,to interpret,enrich,and make sense of a food tradition.