Elements of Food Segregation in the Traditional and Modern Culture of the Kyrgyz People (the Case of the Meat Food)

Abstract

The article takes the case of meat dishes to examine the aspects of food segregation in the traditional and modern culture of the Kyrgyz people. It focuses on a range of issues, such as the choice of cattle for guests, carcass dressing, prestigious meat pieces and their distribution, as well as age, gender, kin, and power hierarchies, and analyzes the various manifestations of food segregation in the contemporary Kyrgyz society. I argue that, in the traditional society, the order of distribution of prestigious meat pieces among the guests remains extremely important, as it reaffirms and validates existing social statuses of individuals within families and kin groups; therefore, this distribution is necessarily orderly and systematic. Thus, certain elements of food segregation remain culturally functional at present, despite the transformations in food consumption that occurred due to economic and social changes during the Soviet period.