The Kitchen as a Modernizing Space: Palestinian Women in Israel

This article looks at the ways by which domestic food practices enable professional Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel to position themselves as modern and entitled to participation and social acceptance in Israeli society, if only as individuals. In this process, domestic kitchens become spaces for female agency. Two sets of culinary capital are accumulated – the traditional and the modern – each involving a different relation to food production and consumption. While the former sustains Palestinian tradition in an altered and commodified form, the latter equips Palestinian citizens of Israel with the necessary cultural capital to participate in public spaces. Such a process requires the women to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. In return, they seek recognition of the local Palestinian community as distinctive from that in the West Bank.