Wim Van Daele

Food literacy and diet quality in young vegans, lacto-ovo vegetarians, pescatarians, flexitarians and omnivores

Public Health Nutrition

Objective: To investigate whether food literacy competencies and diet quality vary between 16-to-... more Objective: To investigate whether food literacy competencies and diet quality vary between 16-to-24-year-olds vegans, lacto-ovo vegetarians, pescatarians, flexitarians and omnivores and to assess whether food literacy is associated with diet quality. Design: Cross-sectional study. Food literacy (general nutrition knowledge, critical nutrition literacy and food skills) and diet quality were measured using an electronic questionnaire. Setting: Southern Norway, September 2021 – March 2022. Participants: Healthy 16–24-year-olds (n 165). Results: Overall, the mean general nutrition knowledge score was moderate (48·0 out of 67·0); the lowest mean score was found in omnivores and the highest in flexitarians (45·6 v. 51·5) (P = 0·034). The mean score of critical nutrition literacy was also moderate (3·7 out of 5·0); vegans showed higher scores compared to other dietary practices (P = 0·018). No difference was observed in food skills between the different dietary practices. The overall media...

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Igniting food assemblages in Sri Lanka: Ritual cooking to regenerate the world and interrelations

Contributions to Indian Sociology, Feb 1, 2013

Food, human beings, ritual events and the world exchange components while their interaction alter... more Food, human beings, ritual events and the world exchange components while their interaction alters their heterogeneous constitution as an assemblage. I intend to revise and vitalise assemblage theory by foregrounding the role fire plays in shaping exchange and transformation by the very process of ‘cooking’. I elaborate these modifications and alchemic transformations of existing theory by exploring the ritual cooking of coconut milk and the offerings made in a harvest rite in Sri Lanka. The offerings of coconuts enable participants to transfer merits as well as to purify themselves in this surrogate self-sacrifice while reconfiguring the positions within the cosmology. The boiling over of coconut milk acts as a centripetal force around which the ritual evolves, drawing together spectators, historical origins, myths, actions and intentionalities. Heated by fire, the ritual ‘cooks’ these components, from which emerge renewed assemblages of the world, human beings and food. Hence, ritual cooking of food becomes an allegorical materialisation of a ‘cooking’ of the world and interrelationships.

The Meaning of Culture-specific Food: Rice and its Webs of Significance in Sri Lanka

The meaning of culture-specific food: rice and its webs of significance in Sri lanka by Wim Van D... more The meaning of culture-specific food: rice and its webs of significance in Sri lanka by Wim Van Daele Dr. Lawless: Wim Van Daele has obtained his masters degree in social and cultural anthropology at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, in 2001. After working, sometimes voluntarily, in various organisations and movements, he obtained his postgraduate degree in Cultures and Development Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven in 2005. Following his internship in Sri Lanka, he continued pursuing his research interests in agricultural change and post-disaster reconstruction. He has been working 'in the field' during altogether 8 months in Sri Lanka and has additional travelling experiences in Africa (4months) and Asia (4months). Since January 2008 he is a research fellow at the Centre Leo Apostel, CLEA-VUB, where he has started conducting research, culminating into a PhD, on the alterglobalisation movement.

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Research as Development: Biomedical Research, Ethics, and Collaboration in Sri Lanka, Salla Sariola, and Bob Simpson, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019, 209 pp

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Oct 7, 2019

In Research as Development, Salla Sariola and Bob Simpson describe the numerous moral quandaries ... more In Research as Development, Salla Sariola and Bob Simpson describe the numerous moral quandaries that arise in global biomedical collaboration. Their vivid account of two clinical trials conducted in Sri Lanka provides a window into the "entanglement of biomedical research, bioethics and development" (p. 19). The authors deftly narrate how ethical protocols, informed consent, material arrangements of testing sites, funding sources, differential power relations, local political, social, and economic contexts, and multiple subjectivities come together in specific ways and get renegotiated when clinical trials get implemented on the ground. Here, we get a clear sense of the painstaking work that is required to bring and hold these heterogeneous aspects together. By delving into this complexity, the book provides a poignant critique of a simplistic diffusionist huband-spoke model where ethics and development are assumed to move from

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Desiring foods: Cultivating non-attachment to nourishment in Buddhist Sri Lanka

Appetite, Oct 1, 2016

Food and desire are intimately entangled whereby food becomes a core tool to manage desire in fas... more Food and desire are intimately entangled whereby food becomes a core tool to manage desire in fashioning oneself as a morally virtuous person. This paper looks at the ways in which Buddhist texts conceptualize human interactions with food and formulate prescriptions on how to handle food as a means of developing an attitude of non-attachment that aids in achieving nirvana-the extinguishing of desire to get released from the cycle of death and rebirth. The particular texts-the Agañña Sutta, the Āhāra Patikūlasaññā, and the Vinaya Pitaka-discussed here exhibit an attitude of deep ambiguity towards food in its capacity to incite desire. On the one hand nutrition is required to maintain life, but on the other, food can potentially be the cause of a degenerate state of mankind and a source of moral degradation. Hence, the Buddhist development of a dispassionate attitude towards food seeks to enable both nourishment and the pursuit of the extinction of the flame of desire in nirvana. Even though the texts formulate practical prescriptions for monks on how to relate to food to aid them in their pursuit, they also serve as moral standards for lay Sinhalese Buddhists who seek to model their everyday behaviour accordingly.

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Moving In-Between the Village and the Globe: The Interconnected Positioning of a Sri Lankan Social Movement

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010

Vibrantly Entangled in Sri Lanka: Food as the Polyrhythmic and Polyphonic Assemblage of Life

Foundations of Science, Nov 10, 2016

Entangled Assemblages

Foundations of Science, Nov 2, 2022

Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simp... more Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simple statement, this article first introduces the approach to food/eating as an assemblage enacted by various heterogeneous components, and further develops it by engaging with actor network theory and material semiotics. Thereafter the focus turns to 'entanglement', as inspired by quantum physics, to elicit the basic dynamics of the entanglement of food and more-than-human beings, conceived of as involving mutual and differential becomings within and among assemblages. The article illustrates these entangled becomings by drawing upon examples from Sri Lanka, which in an intercultural philosophical fashion serve to establish an articulation (in the sense of a connection) between the proposed abstract approach to food and some basic premises of Buddhism and Ayurveda, a South Asian health system. Overall, the article crafts a conceptual toolbox and performs ontological groundwork wherein food and human beings as entangled assemblages provide a productive, refined, and sensitive research apparatus for the intimate study of more-thanhuman life and organization while also spurring novel theorizations through food/eating.

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Fusing worlds of coconuts: the regenerative practice in precarious life-sustenance and fragile relationality in Sri Lanka

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Jun 1, 2013

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Cooking' Life: The Vibrant Entanglement of Food and Human Life in Sri Lanka

This monograph is the result of numerous interactions and transformations. It is an assemblage of... more This monograph is the result of numerous interactions and transformations. It is an assemblage of conversations, travels, books, observations, experiences, encounters, and food that all transformed into the energy and ideas crystallised into this book. It is impossible to acknowledge the impact of everybody and everything that has shaped this work, so I will restrain myself to expressing my gratitude to some people who made all this possible yet, not bearing any responsibility for the actual content. The people not mentioned here are no less important, as this monograph would not have been the same without their contribution. The influence of some has been very particular and my foremost gratitude goes out towards my eldest host-brother and true friend who welcomed me into his lifeworld and the circle of family, friends, and village. He and his family have generously offered me their care, friendship, food, and a place to live while sharing their thoughts, feelings, and domestic intimacy. Without my host family, I would not have had the opportunity to meet so many helpful, knowledgeable, and kind people in the village of research where I have always felt truly at ease. These villagers and my host family members have been my true teachers. My friendship and gratitude also extend to all of my other Sri Lankan friends and acquaintances who have made me feel at home in their country. My research in Sri Lanka has also been made possible by Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB) through which I received funds from the G.0293.08 scholarship of the Flemish Research Fund (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, FWO). At CLEA, I have been supervised by Jan Broekaert who is affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and with whom I had truly inspiring interdisciplinary conversations. I also had several enriching and supportive exchanges with Diederik Aerts, Nicole Note, Gert Goeminne, and several other colleagues. Peter Scholliers affiliated with the Department of History and chair of the Social and Cultural Food Studies centre has likewise been a very supportive co-supervisor. Koen Stroeken from the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University has been my main supervisor and 'inspiritor' in my joint PhD between the VUB and Ghent University. Moreover, I have been able to count on true inspirers who have in a way acted as informal supervisors in which I particularly think of René Devisch, and also Olivier Servais and Mathieu Hilgers. iii René Devisch helped me establish contact with Judith Farquhar with whom I had a very stimulating collaboration during my six-month stay at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago as a non-degree visiting student. I am very thankful for her very to-thepoint remarks that pushed my research further and for her generosity in introducing me to numerous people. Hence, I have had several fascinating conversations with some other scholars, such as Jean Comaroff and Steven Scott, and some students, such as Jolie Nahigian, Larisa Jasarevic, and Duff Morton, who has been so kind to review parts of this monograph. Also Chelsie Yount has generously shared her comments that have helped me to better formulate my ideas. I also thank Koen Stroeken for putting me in touch with Rane Willerslev who initiated a magic circle to present my work and who introduced me generously to several people at the cultural history museum, including Øivind Fuglerud, Tatiana Tereza Kuldova, and Anders Rasmussen during my three-month stay in Oslo. Tereza further introduced me to the South Asian workshop where I was also given the opportunity to present a paper and where I received a lot of engaging comments, for instance from Pamela Price, Ruud Arild Engelsen, and Claus Peter Zoller. I have also very much appreciated the opportunity Clemens Saers and Heidi Brautaset have given me to stay at their house during this period. I am very indebted to Kimberly Trathen for her unlimited effort in the minute editing of this entire work and her careful comments she shared along the way, both of which helped to articulate my ideas in clearer and less complex ways, even though I have persisted in my wordy formulations at times. Also Vito Laterza has generously shared his powerful and creative ideas that have continued to inspire me. There are several more people with whom I have had illuminating conversations with, such as Martin Holbraad, Henrietta Moore, and Jonathan Spencer as well as the people that I met during my one-week visit at Johns Hopkins University where I was warmly welcomed by Veena Das, Sidney Mintz, Ananad Pandian, and Neena Mahadev whom I met earlier in Sri Lanka together with Bart Klem. I also wish to express my gratitude to all the reviewers of my submitted articles for their constructive comments that have helped shape this monograph. Last, but not least, I thank my father, mother, brother, sister, and all my friends who have kept their patience while enduring my PhD-related conversations and who have continued to support me in my passionate endeavour. and political registers. Besides their common preoccupation with excessive desire, kapurālas and activists share a concern with the insecurities, precariousness, and detrimental effects that arise from such unbalanced forms of desire. The kapurāla traced the economic hardship of our neighbouring family back to the presence of pretas. A more Marxist oriented social movement organisation, such as the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR) in Sri Lanka, would rather blame the family's precarious economic situation on the inequalities emerging from the neoliberal economic impetus to consume, compete, extract from the poor, and accumulate capital incessantly and in excessive ways. So, we can see the two common concerns with desire and insecurity being shared by ritual specialists, afflicted people, and activists, even though these are being differently articulated. Generally stated, the villagers, ritual actors, and activists share an analysis of defining the situation of social change as precarious. All respond to it by creating a space to transform the situation. In everyday life, this attempt consists of negotiating well-being by way of procuring, preparing, and consuming healthy and tasty food, whereas in ritual, the spirits are summoned to provide protection and help in cultivation and life-transitions. In activism, this space is created by communicating the analysis to influence policy-making to positively affect the wider community. Whether or not these practices are in vain matters less than the mediation established between the visible, tangible, and practical world, on the one hand, and the invisible world of global forces or spirits affecting the former, on the other. This mediation of seemingly opaque forces and the tangible pragmatics of life have particular salience for people trying to make sense of transitions and seeking to transform these in beneficial ways as to sustain and regenerate life. The cluster of all these similarities and differences among the various tropes of human action in everyday, medical, ritual, and activist life constitute the basic template of this research. The events of crisis, diagnosis, and response described above form a key fragment of social, ritual, and domestic life that emerged from a ten-month fieldwork in a Sinhalese village of about 80 families in the Kurunegala district in the NorthWestern Province of Sri Lanka. Earlier I had carried out a three-month MA dissertation research in 2004, and worked and lived in Colombo for five months in 2006. After my ten-month fieldwork, from October 2008 until August 2009, I returned for another period of six months to conduct research on food activism in Colombo in 2010. The maps of Sri Lanka and the area of my main fieldwork-site are given below.

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Food as the Holographic Condensation of Life in Sri Lankan Rituals

Ethnos, Apr 24, 2017

This paper seeks to elaborate the dynamics through which food acquires potency in shaping human l... more This paper seeks to elaborate the dynamics through which food acquires potency in shaping human life and organization as it takes shape in enacting ritual transformation. I argue that whereas life and various existential concerns get condensed from the fringes of the social order into ritual, food further holographically condenses the existential concerns of life with which it is entangled as an assemblage. As such, it turns into a centripetal force in ritual by constituting a means that enables ritual and somatic transformation to materialise in the matter of food and thus in helping to render ritual effective. To grasp this complex process we will look at the basic dynamic of holographic condensation throughout the different ways in which various foods ritually enact the regeneration of life in the astrological New Year and the Sātuwe anti-sorcery healing rite in a Sinhalese Buddhist village in the NorthWestern province of Sri Lanka.

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Evaluating the effectiveness and implementation of evidence-based early-life nutrition interventions in a community setting a hybrid type 1 non-randomized trial – the Nutrition Now project protocol

Frontiers in Endocrinology

Disappointingly few efficacious health interventions are successfully scaled up and implemented i... more Disappointingly few efficacious health interventions are successfully scaled up and implemented in real world settings. This represents an evidence-to-practice gap, with loss of opportunity to improve practice. Aiming to improve nutrition in the first 1000 days of life, we have combined four efficacious dietary interventions into a single adapted digital resource (Nutrition Now) for implementation in a Norwegian community setting. Nutrition Now targets pregnant women and parents of 0–2-year-olds with messages focusing on healthy dietary behaviours. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) staff are provided with pedagogical tools addressing healthy food exposure and child food acceptance. Objectives: a) evaluate the effectiveness of provision of the Nutrition Now resource on child diet and diet-related outcomes, with special attention to the influence of socio-economic position, b) gather information on the effectiveness of the implementation process to inform forthcoming scale-up ...

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Entangled Assemblages

Foundations of Science

Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simp... more Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simple statement, this article first introduces the approach to food/eating as an assemblage enacted by various heterogeneous components, and further develops it by engaging with actor network theory and material semiotics. Thereafter the focus turns to ‘entanglement’, as inspired by quantum physics, to elicit the basic dynamics of the entanglement of food and more-than-human beings, conceived of as involving mutual and differential becomings within and among assemblages. The article illustrates these entangled becomings by drawing upon examples from Sri Lanka, which in an intercultural philosophical fashion serve to establish an articulation (in the sense of a connection) between the proposed abstract approach to food and some basic premises of Buddhism and Ayurveda, a South Asian health system. Overall, the article crafts a conceptual toolbox and performs ontological groundwork wherein foo...

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Religion and development

With the resurgence of religion and rise of fundamentalism within major religions, academic schol... more With the resurgence of religion and rise of fundamentalism within major religions, academic scholars and development agencies are increasingly debating the appropriate role of religion and faith-based organisations in development policy and practice. A global cast of scholars and practitioners examine these issues and fundamentally question the secular-religious dichotomy. They shed light on the reluctance of mainstream economic development approaches to incorporate religion into policy and practice. They examine recent initiatives by international development agencies and donors to integrate religion into development policy, and to develop partnerships with faith-based organisations. Through research on religious movements in Brazil, South Africa, Sri Lanka, China, Turkey and the states of the 'Arab Spring', the authors discuss whether faith and religion provide a credible alternative to the (neo)liberal democratic development agenda. Original infographics are included to i...

The meaning of culture-specific food : rice and its webs of significance in Sri lanka

Sinhalese farmers in Sri Lanka seem to have an ambiguous relation to the Green revolution. On the... more Sinhalese farmers in Sri Lanka seem to have an ambiguous relation to the Green revolution. On the one hand, most have adopted the use of these high yielding varieties of paddy, but on the other hand one can easily observe practices and discourses that rather implicitly critique biotechnology. This article explores the various cultural uses of pre-green revolution varieties in relation to those cultivated since. More specifically, their role in social and sexual reproduction are investigated as well as their religious roles. Furthermore, it becomes clear that the so-called new and old varieties in everyday discourse allude to the experience of a temporal breach, in social reproduction and cultural evolution, brought about by the green revolution, as these contrasted varieties of rice are related to ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ ways of living respectively. Finally, it is shown that epistemology and ontology contained within the green revolution clash with the ontology of sociality, cons...

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Cooking' Life: The Vibrant Entanglement of Food and Human Life in Sri Lanka

This monograph is the result of numerous interactions and transformations. It is an assemblage of... more This monograph is the result of numerous interactions and transformations. It is an assemblage of conversations, travels, books, observations, experiences, encounters, and food that all transformed into the energy and ideas crystallised into this book. It is impossible to acknowledge the impact of everybody and everything that has shaped this work, so I will restrain myself to expressing my gratitude to some people who made all this possible yet, not bearing any responsibility for the actual content. The people not mentioned here are no less important, as this monograph would not have been the same without their contribution. The influence of some has been very particular and my foremost gratitude goes out towards my eldest host-brother and true friend who welcomed me into his lifeworld and the circle of family, friends, and village. He and his family have generously offered me their care, friendship, food, and a place to live while sharing their thoughts, feelings, and domestic intimacy. Without my host family, I would not have had the opportunity to meet so many helpful, knowledgeable, and kind people in the village of research where I have always felt truly at ease. These villagers and my host family members have been my true teachers. My friendship and gratitude also extend to all of my other Sri Lankan friends and acquaintances who have made me feel at home in their country. My research in Sri Lanka has also been made possible by Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB) through which I received funds from the G.0293.08 scholarship of the Flemish Research Fund (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, FWO). At CLEA, I have been supervised by Jan Broekaert who is affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and with whom I had truly inspiring interdisciplinary conversations. I also had several enriching and supportive exchanges with Diederik Aerts, Nicole Note, Gert Goeminne, and several other colleagues. Peter Scholliers affiliated with the Department of History and chair of the Social and Cultural Food Studies centre has likewise been a very supportive co-supervisor. Koen Stroeken from the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University has been my main supervisor and 'inspiritor' in my joint PhD between the VUB and Ghent University. Moreover, I have been able to count on true inspirers who have in a way acted as informal supervisors in which I particularly think of René Devisch, and also Olivier Servais and Mathieu Hilgers. iii René Devisch helped me establish contact with Judith Farquhar with whom I had a very stimulating collaboration during my six-month stay at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago as a non-degree visiting student. I am very thankful for her very to-thepoint remarks that pushed my research further and for her generosity in introducing me to numerous people. Hence, I have had several fascinating conversations with some other scholars, such as Jean Comaroff and Steven Scott, and some students, such as Jolie Nahigian, Larisa Jasarevic, and Duff Morton, who has been so kind to review parts of this monograph. Also Chelsie Yount has generously shared her comments that have helped me to better formulate my ideas. I also thank Koen Stroeken for putting me in touch with Rane Willerslev who initiated a magic circle to present my work and who introduced me generously to several people at the cultural history museum, including Øivind Fuglerud, Tatiana Tereza Kuldova, and Anders Rasmussen during my three-month stay in Oslo. Tereza further introduced me to the South Asian workshop where I was also given the opportunity to present a paper and where I received a lot of engaging comments, for instance from Pamela Price, Ruud Arild Engelsen, and Claus Peter Zoller. I have also very much appreciated the opportunity Clemens Saers and Heidi Brautaset have given me to stay at their house during this period. I am very indebted to Kimberly Trathen for her unlimited effort in the minute editing of this entire work and her careful comments she shared along the way, both of which helped to articulate my ideas in clearer and less complex ways, even though I have persisted in my wordy formulations at times. Also Vito Laterza has generously shared his powerful and creative ideas that have continued to inspire me. There are several more people with whom I have had illuminating conversations with, such as Martin Holbraad, Henrietta Moore, and Jonathan Spencer as well as the people that I met during my one-week visit at Johns Hopkins University where I was warmly welcomed by Veena Das, Sidney Mintz, Ananad Pandian, and Neena Mahadev whom I met earlier in Sri Lanka together with Bart Klem. I also wish to express my gratitude to all the reviewers of my submitted articles for their constructive comments that have helped shape this monograph. Last, but not least, I thank my father, mother, brother, sister, and all my friends who have kept their patience while enduring my PhD-related conversations and who have continued to support me in my passionate endeavour. and political registers. Besides their common preoccupation with excessive desire, kapurālas and activists share a concern with the insecurities, precariousness, and detrimental effects that arise from such unbalanced forms of desire. The kapurāla traced the economic hardship of our neighbouring family back to the presence of pretas. A more Marxist oriented social movement organisation, such as the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR) in Sri Lanka, would rather blame the family's precarious economic situation on the inequalities emerging from the neoliberal economic impetus to consume, compete, extract from the poor, and accumulate capital incessantly and in excessive ways. So, we can see the two common concerns with desire and insecurity being shared by ritual specialists, afflicted people, and activists, even though these are being differently articulated. Generally stated, the villagers, ritual actors, and activists share an analysis of defining the situation of social change as precarious. All respond to it by creating a space to transform the situation. In everyday life, this attempt consists of negotiating well-being by way of procuring, preparing, and consuming healthy and tasty food, whereas in ritual, the spirits are summoned to provide protection and help in cultivation and life-transitions. In activism, this space is created by communicating the analysis to influence policy-making to positively affect the wider community. Whether or not these practices are in vain matters less than the mediation established between the visible, tangible, and practical world, on the one hand, and the invisible world of global forces or spirits affecting the former, on the other. This mediation of seemingly opaque forces and the tangible pragmatics of life have particular salience for people trying to make sense of transitions and seeking to transform these in beneficial ways as to sustain and regenerate life. The cluster of all these similarities and differences among the various tropes of human action in everyday, medical, ritual, and activist life constitute the basic template of this research. The events of crisis, diagnosis, and response described above form a key fragment of social, ritual, and domestic life that emerged from a ten-month fieldwork in a Sinhalese village of about 80 families in the Kurunegala district in the NorthWestern Province of Sri Lanka. Earlier I had carried out a three-month MA dissertation research in 2004, and worked and lived in Colombo for five months in 2006. After my ten-month fieldwork, from October 2008 until August 2009, I returned for another period of six months to conduct research on food activism in Colombo in 2010. The maps of Sri Lanka and the area of my main fieldwork-site are given below.

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Oscillating between Village and Globe: Articulating Food in Sri Lankan Activism

Food Activism, 2014

Research as Development: Biomedical Research, Ethics, and Collaboration in Sri Lanka, Salla Sariola, and Bob Simpson, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019, 209 pp

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2019

In Research as Development, Salla Sariola and Bob Simpson describe the numerous moral quandaries ... more In Research as Development, Salla Sariola and Bob Simpson describe the numerous moral quandaries that arise in global biomedical collaboration. Their vivid account of two clinical trials conducted in Sri Lanka provides a window into the "entanglement of biomedical research, bioethics and development" (p. 19). The authors deftly narrate how ethical protocols, informed consent, material arrangements of testing sites, funding sources, differential power relations, local political, social, and economic contexts, and multiple subjectivities come together in specific ways and get renegotiated when clinical trials get implemented on the ground. Here, we get a clear sense of the painstaking work that is required to bring and hold these heterogeneous aspects together. By delving into this complexity, the book provides a poignant critique of a simplistic diffusionist huband-spoke model where ethics and development are assumed to move from

Download

Moving In-Between the Village and the Globe: The Interconnected Positioning of a Sri Lankan Social Movement

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Food as the Holographic Condensation of Life in Sri Lankan Rituals

Ethnos, 2017

This paper seeks to elaborate the dynamics through which food acquires potency in shaping human l... more This paper seeks to elaborate the dynamics through which food acquires potency in shaping human life and organization as it takes shape in enacting ritual transformation. I argue that whereas life and various existential concerns get condensed from the fringes of the social order into ritual, food further holographically condenses the existential concerns of life with which it is entangled as an assemblage. As such, it turns into a centripetal force in ritual by constituting a means that enables ritual and somatic transformation to materialise in the matter of food and thus in helping to render ritual effective. To grasp this complex process we will look at the basic dynamic of holographic condensation throughout the different ways in which various foods ritually enact the regeneration of life in the astrological New Year and the Sātuwe anti-sorcery healing rite in a Sinhalese Buddhist village in the NorthWestern province of Sri Lanka.

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