Respectfully eating or not eating: putting food at the centre of Religious Studies

Authors

• Graham Harvey The Open University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67445

Keywords:

Religion -- Definition, Food -- Religious aspects -- Comparative studies, Eating and meals, Diet, Cooking, Food habits, Nutrition, Implicit religion, Everyday life, Lord's Supper, Christianity, Maori (New Zealand people)

Abstract

With reference to data drawn from both ethnology and ethology, I argue that studying foodways does not merely add additional information about religions, but enables better understanding of religion. Rather than defining religion cognitively in relation to beliefs and believing (modernist tropes that have shaped the study of religion) I explore the effect of defining religion in relation to the questions, ‘what do you eat?’ and ‘with whom do you eat?’