Manger à Pâques en Grèce égéenne

• Main Author: Katerina Melissinou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre d'Études Balkaniques 2017-03-01
• Series: Cahiers Balkaniques
• Subjects: Cooking; Easter; Uxori-matrilocal; Viri-patrilocal; Aegean; Greece
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ceb/7135

This contribution aims at implementing the relationships between Easter ritual cooking in Greece and contemporary representations of gender, among others through the traditional way of post-marital residence, that is to say, the place of residence of the young pair. Those three materialities, food, body and space, do echo gender ideology. In mainland Greece, traditional post-marital residence is patri-virilocal and the Easter lamb, roasted on a spit, is a time of celebration of agnatic kinship networks. Conversely, Aegean Greece post-marital residence is matri-uxorilocal. The emblematic Easter dish of the Aegean islands, stuffed kid, appears to be linked to girls’ and women’s ages symbols while being also fundamentally linked to the space resulting of dwelling practices. Cooking and space are both evocative of representations of the body–including the reproductive body, male or female.