International Journal of Social Science Research (IJSSR)

Food Meaning and Migrant Identity: A Sociological Analysis of Chakma Ritual Cuisine through the FMD Framework

This study explores how the migrated Chakma community in New Town, Kolkata, preserves cultural identity and resists acculturation through ceremonial food practices. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews with forty respondents, it interprets the meanings of traditional dishes such as Pajon, Hebang, and Sidol-based curries through the Food Meaning Dimensions (FMD) framework (Aktaş-Polat & Polat, 2020). The analysis situates food as a “total social fact” that links ritual, memory, and adaptation. Findings reveal that food serves three sociological functions: it embodies consumption as moral and ecological practice, transfer as intergenerational pedagogy—especially through women’s labor—and identity as symbolic resistance in urban diaspora. Despite migration-induced constraints, the Chakmas practice what this paper terms adaptive conservation, maintaining cultural essence through flexible innovation. Through the lens of Bourdieu’s cultural capital, Mead’s symbolic interactionism, and Appadurai’s gastro-politics, the research argues that food operates as a living archive of belonging, transforming displacement into resilience and everyday cooking into a subtle act of cultural continuity.