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Food and Gender in Pacific-Asia: A Case Study on Earthen Ovens

  • Asia Review
  • Abbr : SNUACAR
  • 2015, 5(1), pp.165~191
  • Publisher : 아시아연구소
  • Research Area : Social Science > Social Science in general

Toshimitsu Kawai 1

1소노다 여자대학

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with food and gender of the Pacific areas, especiallyAustronesian language-speaking groups. In these areas includingMalaysia, Eastern Indonesia, and most islands of Oceania, societies placegreater stress on the polar division between the male and female halvesof the cosmological unity. Many scholars have focused on the separationand integrity between wife givers and wife takers in the symbolic divisionbetween males and females in East Indonesia, but some have turned theirfocus to other points. One scholar proposed “relatedness” derived from acts of procreation andfrom living and eating together in Malaysia. The relationships are transformedinto kinship by living together and sharing food, even if they werenot biologically related. The process of living together and sharing a hearthis a life-giving process. Another group of scholars edited a book on kinshipand food in South East Asia. They were especially interested in the genderassociations with rice and other core staple crops. Similarly, this paper seeks to explore food and gender from the viewpointof Oceanic earthen ovens. The oven is a kind of hearth to steamingredients on the heated stones in a big hole in the ground. The hole　has many symbolic meanings. As is well known, the image of a hole anda path is important in Oceanic societies. It is also thought that life form flows throughout the world just as blood and water circulate inside of one’s body. This is thought to be possible since everything has many holes justlike a human body that has orifices through which food, water, and theother life forms are consumed. The study of the dual division between male and female halves of thecosmological unity has a long history in the Oceania. To take an example,there exist separated domains between males and females in Fiji. Land isthought to be the male side while the sea is the female side. Both sides areseparated “holes” between which food taboo is observed ritually. The earthen oven belongs to the male side, but the both foodstuffs,vegetables and seafood, are placed in this hole and cooked. It is a place ofunity between the male and female holes. I insist that the meaning of theunity is a part of prototypical schemata of thirdness that ties both sides.

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