Cultural Hybridity in Bom Retiro: Ananalysisbasedon food practices
Cultural hybridity. Food practices. Cultural identities. Bom Retiro.
This doctoral thesis analyzes the process of cultural hybridity through food practices in the Bom Retiro neighborhood, located in the city of São Paulo, marked by different waves of immigrants from the early 20th century to the present day. Two sources are examined: the Inventário Nacional de Referências Culturais (INRC) of the neighborhood and that produced through the Oral History methodology, based on interviews with restaurant owners in this territory. By understanding food as a cultural practice, the relationships between the memory and identities of immigrant communities are highlighted. This analysis shows that the neighborhood has hybrid characteristics, influenced by processes of translation, territorialization, and reterritorialization, as pointed out by Stuart Hall and Néstor García Canclini. This conclusion challenges narratives of pure originality and authenticity, in which a single cultural representation of a particular preparation method or use of an ingredient prevails over others. In this sense, the thesis also demonstrates that the cultural identities existing in Bom Retiro are multiple, hybrid, and essential to the configuration of its spaces, so that the transformation of the neighborhood into Koreatown, where the projection of a unique and homogeneous culture predominates, would likely lead to a historical and identity erasure of various actors and social groups.