41. Cereal belongings: The significance of staple crops in defining and contesting relatedness. Peter Berger, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

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1 41. Cereal belongings: The significance of staple crops in defining and contesting relatedness Peter Berger, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Roland Hardenberg, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen In all corners of the world staple crops constitute the basis for the understandings of personhood and notions of belonging, to people as well as to land and animals. Beside these constructive dimensions of crops related to ideas of production, ingestion and sharing, staple crops are the fulcrum of negotiation, suspicion, conflict and violence, because they are a scarce resource and entail issues of ownership. This is even more so in situations where state agencies and global companies execute policies that lead to dispossession of land, displacement and environmental contamination. Staple crops, by default, involve affective, moral and political dimensions in relation to belonging. In relation to this topic we address two questions formulated in the call for papers for the DGV-conference 2017: first, how political and economic entanglements influence the constitution and evaluation of modes of belonging and, second, the role of material culture in such processes. We are especially interested in those situations where two (or more) types of grain compete in their significance in a particular region, this competition giving rise to specific processes of social differentiation, articulations of gender roles and various cultural expressions in ritual, myth, art, literature or other fields. Crops, gods, subalterns and kings: Rice and millet rituals in Central India Peter Berger, University of Groningen, The Netherlands In Central India rice and millet are the staple grains for many indigenous or Adivasi communities. This situation probably has prevailed for centuries and cultural conceptions of agnation and affinity, life and fertility, brother and sister, dry and irrigated fields, earth and water have been in manifold ways been related to these crops. Probably few highland communities have elaborated the rice/millet theme to an extent encountered among the Joria Porja. There, two twin festivals, each lasting ten days or more, are dedicated to rice and millet respectively. However, though the crops frame these ritual processes, the festivals display a

2 number of different themes. The millet ritual (nandi) is referencing Joria ethnicity in a short proverb common in the region relating three ethnic groups and the king to four festivals, thus constructing four pairs of a social category/festival relationship. The twin rice ritual of the Joria is not mentioned in the proverb and it is here that a precolonial royal polity is ritually enacted and contested as subalterns fight against soldiers. The paper offers a brief description and preliminary reflection of some aspects of these two festivals. Brot ist keine Nahrung : Die Bedeutung von Mais und Maisanbau angesichts konkurrierender Getreideproduktionen im tepehuanischen Huehuetla, Hidalgo (Mexiko) Anja Bohnenberger, Philipps-Universität Marburg Als wohl bedeutendste Nutzpflanze des indigenen Mesoamerikas liefert der Mais nicht nur die materielle Lebensgrundlage. Er ist zugleich ein Symbol der Identität. Sein Wachstumszyklus drückt Prozesse des Entstehens, Werdens und Vergehens unterschiedlichster Dinge aus. Die Produkte seiner Verarbeitung sind Güter des Austauschs und der Kommunikation zwischen menschlichen und nichtmenschlichen Entitäten im Kosmos. Beispiele alltäglicher und ritueller Praktiken sowie historischer, mythischer und kosmologischer Narrative der Sprecherinnen und Sprecher des Huehuetla-Tepehua illustrieren die multiplen Bedeutungen von Mais. Sie bezeugen einerseits einezunehmende Konfrontation mit Nahrungsmitteln auf Grundlage von Weizen, deren Konsum durch mediale Vermarktung an Prestige gewinnt. Andererseits thematisieren sie ein Schwinden des Anbaus von Mais aufgrund seines Werteverlusts angesichts multinationaler Massenproduktion und nationalstaatlicher Subventionsprogramme. Entgegen dem vermeintlichen Ziel der Armutsbekämpfung erscheint die Sorge um deren Forcierung berechtigt, die mit dem Verlust der Autonomie durch das Kennen und Können von Techniken zur lokalen Nahrungsmittelsicherung einhergeht.

3 Wheat the magnificent and rice the mighty: Towards an understanding of cereal rituals and their gendered dimension in Central Asia Jeanine Dağyeli, Leibnitz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin Central Asia is one of the transient regions in the world where wheat and rice cultures meet. Many imaginations of (national) identity, belonging, healthiness and purity are connected with them. They share a history of sacralisation and are the basis for a number of gendered foods and rituals. This paper examines the gendered aspects of these two cereals in southern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan focusing on the annual ritual cycle of the spiritual patron of wheat, Bobo-yi Dehqon who is at the heart of malecentred rituals, taboos and practices. On the female side, cereal rites and practices (e-g. connected to the spring equinox) will be explored. All of these rituals exist only in vestiges today but still inform norms of good behaviour, gender-specific roles, hospitality and consumption. While one part of the presentation will give an overview of pre-soviet ritual practices, the second will discuss how people today make sense of these cereal norms, interpret and challenge them. Hard or soft wheat bread? Moroccan consumers between regional, national and international belonging Katharina Graf, SOAS, University of London, UK Moroccan bread the basis of social life and material sustenance especially in low-income households is made of different cereals. For instance, while French-style baguette is made of 100% soft wheat and only sold for breakfast, khubz dyel dar is homemade flatbread typically consisting of 50% soft and 50% hard wheat and prepared for lunch. Soft wheat flour is cherished for its elasticity but considered bland and stuffing, whereas hard wheat flour is considered tasty and healthy but hard to process. While soft wheat is largely imported and subject to strict governmental regulations, hard wheat is produced on Moroccan soil and governed by market principles. In a context where bodily memories of food scarcity run deep and where food security is far from ascertained for many low-income urban households today, the choice of cereal is closely connected to consumers material, cultural, economic and political sense of belonging and

4 expresses notions of citizenship. The practices of consumption of cereals in the form of bread is a fruitful venue for studying this ambivalent relationship between citizens as consumers, the state and the globe, as I seek to do in this contribution. Rice on Top of Millet: The Hierarchy Between Two Grains Roland Hardenberg, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main This paper elaborates the cultural differences and similarities between rice and millet cultivation, distribution and consumption in the highlands of Odisha. The data derives from fieldwork among the Dongria Kond, an ethnic group that is listed as a scheduled tribe by the government. The Dongria Kond populate the steep hills of the Niamgiri mountain range where they practice shifting cultivation. Among the many crops, different types of millet are regarded as particularly important for nutrition, social and ritual purposes. Millet forms the basis of daily meals, a major clan (kuda) in this area takes its name Hikoka from the word for little millet (hiko), and numerous rituals involve the use of millet. Millet competes with white rice (manjinga) which is acquired by the Dongria in different ways: it is distributed freely by the state as part of their development activities, attained through barter on different markets, bought in shops in the valleys or cultivated in certain parts of the hill range suitable for wet rice. This rice has become a status marker, as it is used as festive food and considered to be proper for hosting guests. Cereals and women: Subsistence in indigenous societies of Odisha Prasanna K.Nayak, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India The indigenous people inhabiting Odisha grow distinct varieties of staple cereals, mainly millets and rice. The production process is labour intensive and the produce from land dependent upon the land-use pattern and the technology which different indigenous groups follow in given ecologies. Family members, men, women and children, actively engage themselves in the entire process of production of cereals, customarily seeking cooperation of their fellow kinsmen. Women form the central pillar of their economy. The all-encompassing role of women in production, consumption, distribution and exchange of

5 cereals is valued by people and it has got socio-political significance, too. Men compete among themselves to win and acquire a woman who is good at cooking millet gruel. Inter-lineage and inert-clan fights ensue among them over a piece of cereal field where men sacrifice their lives and women take over all agricultural operations and manage securing subsistence to the family. If two men are in a brawl, it is their wives who can intervene and pacify them, and nobody else can play the role of peacemaker. Young women even already betrothed to someone decline to join the would-be husbands and wait for long years until their little brothers are grown up. Alternatively, the would-be husband would be invited to join the would-be wife s family to lead a married life. Such customary practices used to have a direct bearing on cultivating cereals for subsistence. That is why all indigenous people in Odisha want their first child to be a girl and become happy when more girls are born in the family. By extension, the traditional belief in rural villages of Odisha goes that if a girl child comes to the family first, she brings luck and she is regarded as goddess Laxmi. This paper therefore seeks to discuss and analyse an array of ethnographic facts collected from among a few well known indigenous societies of Odisha in support of the assertion made in the title of the paper. Bambara peasants between local millet and imported rice Barbara Polak, Universität Bayreuth The paper analyzes change in staple crop consumption in a West African peasant society. For centuries, millet has been the core staple crop for Bambara peasants in West Africa. In the region of Bèlèdugu north of the Malian capital Bamako, the importance of millet is reflected in rituals of fertility and work songs. Since the 1980s, however, the priority of growing millet, corresponding rituals, and an ethics of work tying economic success to diligence and toil have all decreased in relevance. Influenced by their experience as migrants in West African cities, the younger generation today prefers dishes from rice, of which only small quantities can be grown locally. They thus buy rice with income generated from selling cash-crops such as peanuts and cotton. The young and the old quarrel about the proper staple crop and the corresponding issue of

6 proper conduct of life. From the older generation s point of view, daily life is inherently tied to the culture of millet cultivation. By contrast, Bambara peasants in neighboring Senegal for decades have predominantly grown cash-crops in order to afford imported rice. They have accepted the decline of millet growing and the corresponding dishes and traditions. Comparing Bambara peasants in both ethnographic sites offers insights into the historical process of change in their consumption patterns.