Kibbi and kinship: Lebanese home cooking in Latin America as a method for memory, kinship, and the hybridization of food and identity
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Abstract
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this study is to explore the practice, significance, and development over
time of ‘traditional’ home cooking for the descendants of Lebanese immigrants in Argentina and
greater Latin America. This is an exploratory paper suggestive of themes that could be examined
more deeply through more localized research (Rowe 2012). Nonetheless, this study supports a
number of conclusions about this dynamic diasporic group and its relationship to traditional food
practices. Narratives and responses about meaning in memory, kinship, and tradition tell an
important story about motivations for engaging in food and cooking practices among the
descendants of the Lebanese diaspora in Latin America. My study shows that my participants
and respondents engage in food and cooking practice as a largely unselfconscious reproduction
of cultural identity motivated primarily by a desire to connect with their kin, to evoke memories
of their past, and to preserve the gastronomic heritage taught to them—whether directly or
indirectly—by their immigrant ancestors. [TRUNCATED]
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This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license.