Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Consuming Hunger

2014; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2752/175174414x13948130848025

1751-7443

Mai‐Lei Woo Kinshella,

Child Nutrition and Water Access

Among the Makonde of Southeastern coastal Tanzania, cassava (Manihot esculenta L.) is a staple and traditional food. Focusing on perspectives regarding cassava from Sinde village in Tanzania, this paper explores how the history and social relations involved in the movement of cassava—also known as manioc, mandioca and yuca—become embodied in the eating experience. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sinde, this paper examines how cassava was the most commonly named traditional food by exploring what being "traditional" means in local contexts. Local people in Sinde negotiate their position in discourses of development and modernity through their food preferences and local preferences for rice over cassava embody histories of European colonization and Swahili civilization. Understanding local perspectives of cassava is important because it is a focus of international development to alleviate hunger in Africa and local perspectives contribute to the acceptability of cassava-related programs.