Eating with the hands: imperial knowledge and the making of the five-finger dish “beshbarmak”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69567/Keywords:
Beshbarmak /bishbarmak, ethnographic knowledge production, empire and knowledge, colonial classification, imperial epistemologies, embodied practices, eating by handAbstract
This paper examines how the term beshbarmak (bishbarmak) emerged through early processes of incorporation of the Qazaq steppe into Russian imperial structures. It argues that beshbarmak should be understood not as the name of a pre-existing dish, but as a category produced through imperial practices of observation, administrative saturation, and the classificatory imperative. The term entered the historical record in contexts shaped by prolonged co-presence and sustained interaction between imperial outsiders and colonized actors within a narrow frontier setting in the Orenburg region. In such contexts, where local food practices had to be rendered nameable and intelligible, early accounts foregrounded observable practices—most notably the consumption of meat seasoned with salt by hand –rather than stable recipes or locally grounded names for dishes. Through descriptive naming, these practices were gradually endowed with the appearance of cultural specificity and came to be associated with particular groups, including Qazaqs, Bashkirs, and Tatars. More broadly, using the case of beshbarmak, the paper examines how embodied food practices of local populations were made legible within imperial regimes of knowledge.
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