Eating, Drinking and Drawing Ethnic Boundaries in the Elena Micro-Region (Northern Bulgaria): A Micro-Sociological View of Identity Politics through the ‘Gift Exchange’ Theory
Eating, Drinking and Drawing Ethnic Boundaries in the Elena Micro-Region (Northern Bulgaria): A Micro-Sociological View of Identity Politics through the ‘Gift Exchange’ Theory

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine ethnic identity politics through Marcel Mauss’s classic theory of ‘gift exchange’, i.e. the obligation to give, receive and reciprocate gifts, as it potentially exists in contemporary societies. Specifically, through the limited example of gift exchange of food and alcohol in the Elena micro-region (Northern Bulgaria), I seek to understand whether giving/counter-giving may be a social technology for reinforcing or softening the symbolic boundaries that separate ethnic groups – here the Bulgarian majority from the Roma and (self-identified) Turkish minorities. In order to shed some light on this question, I focus on two types of gift exchange that I was primarily, but not exclusively, involved in during my PhD fieldwork between 2015 and 2018. First, several meals and banquets with friends and acquaintances. Second, several kurbans – the traditional sacrificial ritual for good health – to which I was invited. Through informal conversations about everyday ethnicity and direct observations of the social organisation of cultural difference at these events, I collected data on the correlation between local identity politics and the gift exchange of food and alcohol. In what follows, I explore this correlation using the anthropological transactional approach coined by Fredrik Barth.

• Details
• Contents