The role of children in the construction of food heritage

notes from two Brazilian sociocultural contexts

Abstract

This article, the result of a reflection presented at the “8th DIAITA Luso-Brazilian International Colloquium on Food History and Cultures” with the theme “From nature, lady of the table, at the table, master of nature” aims to provoke the following reflection: Can children play an active role in building food heritage? To this end, it is proposed to present the experiences and representations of Brazilian children in different sociocultural contexts, one indigenous and the other non-indigenous, regarding the relationships established with food, which includes the perception of food variety and seasonality. The theoretical references for this attempt are based on the fields of Childhood Anthropology, as well as studies on food cultures. Furthermore, we seek a seminal interpretation of the phenomenon based on a typical problem of modernity: the separation (or conjunction) between nature and culture, as proposed by Bruno Latour. The methodology used comes from participant observation in field research carried out in different times and spaces: the first, an ethnography among Galibi-Marworno indigenous children from Amapá (2006) and the second, the result of an extension project on the PNAE (National School Feeding Program) carried out in the interior of Minas Gerais (2018).