Social class and consumption of quinua in Cuenca. 2017

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18537/RFCM.37.01.05

Keywords:

chenopodium quinoa, medical anthropology, feeding behavior, healthy lifestyle

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This article shows from the voices of women, the relationship between social class and food consumption. It identifies how the quinoa is today consumed fundamentally by the upper strata of the society in Cuenca and it is almost unknown by peasants and poorer urban strata, the result of processes related to distinction or stigma.

Objective: Understand the practices of social differentiation in Cuenca from the alimentation, using as a case study, the consumption of quinoa.

Methodology: It is a multisite ethnographic research with seven families; four of the urban area and three of the rural area of Cuenca, it was carried out between October 2016 and June 2017.

Results: The stories of the women around the feeding and the consumption of quinoa allow visualizing the symbolic elements that revolve around the food and its praxis in the particular historical and sociocultural context of Cuenca.

Conclusions: Food consumption is marked by class habitus. The quinoa is an example of this, it disappeared from the family table because of the symbolic depreciation inherited from the colony, and today it returns as a communicating symbol of social distinction.

Keywords: chenopodium quinoa, medical  anthropology,  feeding behavior, healthy lifestyle.

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Published

2019-06-22

Issue

Vol. 37 No. 1 (2019): Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad de Cuenca

Section

Original Article

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