Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Perceived as one of the avenues through which societies classify food and a product of logical reflections on material culture that is based on years of trial and error, food taboos and prohibitions are a way to showcase the symbolic meanings attached to food. They play a crucial role in understanding issues related to power and serve as a means to distinguish one cultural group from another. Similarly, as ethnicity is defined based on what is eaten, it can also be defined based on what is prohibited and not consumed. This paper focuses on how food prohibitions contribute to ethnic identity construction. This ethnographic study contributes to the debate on the sociology of food and eating. This research employs criterion and theoretical purposive sampling methods. Data for the study was collected between 2018 and 2019 using diverse ethnographic methods (household and key informant interviews and focus group discussions). The study site is Berekuso, a farming community in the Eastern region of Ghana. The study discovered that most individuals in the community continue to adhere to some of the taboos of the past although changes in the social structure has impacted on the practice. Thus, food taboos have been renegotiated to meet the current structural changes. By instituting ethnic attitudes towards food including taboos, groups and societies can show their uniqueness in comparison to others.