Beschreibung:
Alien Foods : the Dual Language of Algerian Jews in France The ethnography and analysis of dietary practices of Algerian Jews settled in France since the early 1960s clearly reveal -in the food habits of a minority - the existence of a social and ethical code informed by a strong pattern of distinction and otherness. The language of culinary practices - in which the attachment of the group to the North African Jewish tradition is combined with a keen desire for integration into French society - is based on a distinction at every level of culinary activity between foods that serve as keepers of a tradition and those that serve as a means of exchange : between traditional, festive cooking and unsophisticated recipes for daily use : between the family conviviality of holiday meals and the extra-domestic conviviality of ordinary meals. It is exactly as if the function of foods in North African Jewish cuisine - according to the manner in which they are prepared and eaten - were to label and classify gestures, individuals and moments in time by distinguishing between a time reserved for the group's own food and a time reserved for extraneous foods. The cuisine of Algerian Jews is the locus of the daily reassertion of their group status with respect to the social majority.