Ambivalent nostalgia: Jewish-Israeli migrant women "cooking" ways to return home. (8th August 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ore, Hadas
• Is Part Of: Food, culture, & society. Volume 21:Number 4(2018)
• Page Start: 568
• Page End: 584
• Publication Date: 2018-08-08
• Subjects: Home cooking -- Jewish-Israeli -- migrant women -- nostalgia -- ambivalence; Food -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Nutrition policy -- Periodicals; 641
• DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2018.1481332
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-7443

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article highlights the way middle-class women cook at home following their international migration, the memories provoked by home-cooked dishes, and the contesting emotions they express and materialize in relation to these dishes. The ethnography is based on fieldwork during 2007–2014, exploring the everyday experiences of 25 Jewish-Israeli mothers living in Auckland, New Zealand in the 2000s. Elaborating on the theory of everyday nostalgic consumption, it is demonstrated that the women take three emotive steps through their cooked dishes and memories, returning to past familial homes: longing and pleasure, ambivalence, and self-irony. They share a kind of ambivalent nostalgia that not only becomes their means to travel in time and space, but also enables them to negotiate kinship relationships between four generations, and express ambivalence as critique of their familial homes.