A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details The Route of the Land’s Roots: Connecting life-worlds between Guinea-Bissau and Portugal through food-related meanings and practices Maria Abranches Doctoral Thesis PhD in Social Anthropology UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX 2013 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX PhD in Social Anthropology Maria Abranches Doctoral Thesis The Route of the Land’s Roots: Connecting life-worlds between Guinea-Bissau and Portugal through food-related meanings and practices SUMMARY Focusing on migration from Guinea-Bissau to Portugal, this thesis examines the role played by food and plants that grow in Guinean land in connecting life-worlds in both places. Using a phenomenological approach to transnationalism and multi-sited ethnography, I explore different ways in which local experiences related to food production, consumption and exchange in the two countries, as well as local meanings of foods and plants, are connected at a transnational level. One of my key objectives is to deconstruct some of the binaries commonly addressed in the literature, such as global processes and local lives, modernity and tradition or competition and solidarity, and to demonstrate how they are all contextually and relationally entwined in people’s life- worlds. In order to do so I trace Guinean foodstuffs and plants from their origin sites in Guinea-Bissau to their final destination in Portugal. I examine, first, the significance of the Guinean land where they grow. Second, I look at the adaptations that take place in Guineans’ relationship with that land when it ‘travels’ – through its food and plants – to Portugal. Third, I explore food-related ways in which the past, present and future of a Guinean life-world that is ‘disrupted’ by migration are brought together through memory practices and future projects of migration and return. Finally, I examine practices of food exchange as gifts and trade across borders. By starting with production and ending with exchange practices, this thesis emphasises that both are not necessarily alienated from each other, even when they are physically distanced by migration. The unique relationships they generate and the role played by Guinean land’s special properties, as well as the fact that these are able to travel, through the food and plants that share its substance, to Portugal, enable Guineans’ local life-worlds to be connected in a transnational context. Table of contents SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................3 List of illustrations ......................................................................................................7 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1. Introduction: historical and fieldwork settings ...................................... 11 1.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 11 1.2. Between Guinea-Bissau and Portugal: setting the scene ........................................... 13 1.2.1. Guinea-Bissau: early movements and cultural encounters ................................. 14 1.2.2. Trade and agriculture: from colonialism to post-independence political economy ........................................................................................................................ 17 1.2.3. Liberalisation and structural adjustment reforms ............................................. 20 1.2.4. Migration from Guinea-Bissau to Portugal ......................................................... 22 1.2.5. The Guinean presence in Lisbon ......................................................................... 25 1.3. Methodology: data collection and writing ................................................................ 26 1.3.1. Multi-sited ethnography ...................................................................................... 26 1.3.2. The beginning of the journey: fieldwork in Portugal .......................................... 30 1.3.3. Looking for the origins: fieldwork settings in Guinea-Bissau ............................. 35 1.3.4. Back to Portugal .................................................................................................. 40 1.3.5. Outline of the thesis and the dilemmas of ethnographic writing ...................... 41 Chapter 2. Conceptual and theoretical framework ................................................. 44 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 44 2.2. Gendered transnational life-worlds .......................................................................... 44 2.2.1. Migration and transnationalism ..........................................................................45 2.2.2 A phenomenological approach ........................................................................... 48 2.2.3. Some notes on gender in African societies ......................................................... 51 2.3. Land, territory and ethnicity ...................................................................................... 55 2.3.1. Perceptions of land and agriculture in Africa ..................................................... 55 2.3.2. Land as territory and ethnicity: from academic theories to grounded insights.......................................................................................................................... 58 2.3.3. Land and performativity in the construction of identities ................................. 63 2.4. Migration, material culture and food: the false search for ‘authenticity’ ............... 64 2.5. Memories, modernities and traditions ..................................................................... 68 2.5.1. A spatial and material approach to memories ................................................... 68 2.5.2. Memories and historical subjectivities: colonialism, ‘modernities’ and ‘traditions’ ...................................................................................................................... 71 2.6. Theories of exchange: gifts, reciprocities and trade ................................................. 77 2.6.1. Giving and reciprocating ...................................................................................... 77 2.6.2. Conceptualising trade within local and global economies ............................... 79 2.6.3. Understanding an informal landscape .............................................................. 84 Chapter 3. The origin of Guinean living things: connecting people, plants and land ............................................................................................................................ 86 3.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 86 3.2. ‘The land where you were given life’: urban fresh vegetables, farmers and the land that connects both ........................................................................................................... 90 3.2.1. Women, farming and crop commercialisation in Guinea-Bissau ..................... 96 3.3. Tracing food from Guinean orchards, wild fruit trees and waters .......................... 98 3.4. Plant- and animal-based medicinal products from the Guinean woodlands ........ 103 3.5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 108 Chapter 4. The travel of the land through its living things: adaptations in perceptions and uses of Guinean foods and plants in Lisbon ................................ 111 4.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 111 4.2. ‘How’s your body?’ Food, health and protection ..................................................... 113 4.3. Migration and the negotiation of ‘original’ Guinean land ....................................... 115 4.3.1. Food encounters: Guinean food’s positioning in relation to ‘the other’ ........... 116 4.3.2. ‘Is it really Guinean fish?’ Endowing exogenous food with Guinean values .... 119 4.4. Preparing moni during Ramadan: religious foodways in a transnational setting ...............................................................................................................................123 4.5. ‘It is just a drink’ or the spirituality of food: understanding ‘contradictions’ in Guineans’ perceptions and experiences of special foods ............................................... 127 4.6. ‘I want to be a modern muru’. ‘Spiritual-religious’ powers in foreign land ............ 131 4.7. Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 136 Chapter 5. Connecting the