Feeling connected across borders: haptic experiences of food and drink preparation among Palestinian women in Britain

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research with Palestinian women in Britain, this article explores how the everyday sensations associated with food and drink preparation develop, maintain and transmit a sense of connectedness. Focusing on touch–the feel of foodstuffs and kitchen utensils–I show how continued connections with people and place are felt and narrated through moments of both familiar and unfamiliar haptic sensation. I argue that foregrounding these bodily sensations helps unpack the links between embodied experiences of place and displacement, at local, national and transnational scales. The empirical material in this paper therefore provides a unique perspective from which to examine connection and belonging across borders: challenging methodologically nationalist approaches even as it demonstrates the continued importance of “the national” in the Palestinian context. The embodied knowledges and memories presented here offer new insights into how culinary practice structures diasporic Palestinians’ relationships with Palestine and their sense of Palestinianness.