Eating with Others: Food, Faith and Spaces of Multicultural Conviviality

In this presentation I draw on practice-led research on religious spaces and celebrations as key sites for personal and collective practices of multicultural (and multifaith) food exchange, which foster positive conviviality. This research developed through a participatory and creative project, Spiritual Flavours (www.spiritualflavours.com) – including a photographic series, a 30-minute film and a recipe/photo book – and uniquely engages seven faith communities in one neighbourhood in West London. The project contributes to emerging scholarship on how these communities create and adapt spaces through creative material practices – in this case, involving food. Global migration and the increase of highly diverse urban settings has fuelled social research on multicultural relations and cohabitation, with much literature questioning the power relations of ethnic food consumption. While scholars have explored the significance of food cultures and agency in diverse urban settings, these have mainly focused on the high street, within commercial settings, such as restaurants and markets. Little attention has been given to religious food practices within urban settings and within faith communities for enabling interpersonal (non-commercial) multicultural relationships of exchange and reciprocity. In this presentation I argue that these have a paramount role for developing embodied and generally positive multicultural and multi-faith relationships. Further, because of these material practices, the religious identity of many worshipers in these communities is often experienced and celebrated as intrinsically multicultural.