Food, Religion and Social Changes: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches

Thursday, 10 July 2025: 13:00-14:45
Location: ASJE018 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
RC22 Sociology of Religion (host committee)

Language: English, French and Spanish

This session proposes to discuss the interconnections between food and religion through the perspective of social changes. Be it in food production and consumption (or its prohibition), in giving value to nutrition and preventing food waste, in identity-making and marking public spaces, food is a central component of social activities and religious lives. Of late, social scientists are increasingly recognising the centrality of food in the study of religious practices. This session aims to reflect on theoretical and empirical approaches to food and religion for better understanding religious diversity, its visibility and public recognition, heritage and authenticity, popular creativity, and mostly social changes and structuration. We encourage papers based on empirical cases that explore food and religion with a material, spatial and sensory perspective or other innovative methodological approaches.
Session Organizers:
Eloisa MARTIN, Federal Univerisity of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Alexandre GRANDJEAN, University of Lausanne, Switzerland and Laura CUCH GRASES, Goldsmtih University, United Kingdom
Oral Presentations
Food Encounters: Muslim Food-Aid and Inter-Religious Entanglements in Britain
Stefan WILLIAMSON FA, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Iftar in the Street. the Spatial Configuration of a Food-Based Communitarian Ritual in Spanish Cities.
Melania BRITO CLAVIJO, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain; Victor ALBERT BLANCO, Université Paris 8, France; Alex GOVERS, University of Leuven, Belgium; Laura CUCH GRASES, Goldsmtih University, United Kingdom; Rosa MARTINEZ CUADROS, University of Barcelona, Spain
Rites of Reintegration: Building Shrines and Cooking Votive Meals Among the Alawites in Hatay, Turkey
Su Hyeon CHO, Turkey
The Concept of Zero-Waste Lifestyle with Reference to Vegetarianism in Sanatan Dharma Its Impact on Climate.
DEEP SHIKHA, India
“Here I Can like Watermelon”: Culinary Redemption Among the African Hebrew Israelites
Nir AVIELI, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
“Do You Eat Pork?”: Religion, Heritage and Culturalization of Citizenship
Nur Yasemin URAL, University of Leipzig, Germany
Changing Practice and Introducing Belief: Ezidi Religious and Cultural Transformations Around Food in the Aftermath of the Sinjar Genocide
Rick Latham LECHOWICK, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Distributed Papers
Eating with Others: Food, Faith and Spaces of Multicultural Conviviality
Laura CUCH GRASES, Goldsmtih University, United Kingdom
See more of: RC22 Sociology of Religion
See more of: Research Committees
<< Previous Session | Next Session >>