Forbidden from the Heart: Flexible Food Taboos, Ambiguous Culinary Transgressions, and Cultural Intimacy in Hoi An, Vietnam

Abstract

Kieng kỵ, literally “forbidden [from the] heart”, is the term used in Vietnam when referring to taboos, yet the sense of complete prohibition associated with taboos in Western cultures is incompatible with Vietnamese food cosmology. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the central Vietnamese town of Hoi An since the late 1990s, this chapter follows the consumption of two kinds of meats that are publically condemned but may be consumed in specific contexts: he-goat meat (thịt de) and “jungle” meat (thịt rừng). These meats are served in food venues that specialize in alcohol and are associated with excessive drinking, extreme masculinity, and illicit social relations. Michael Herzfeld’s notion of Cultural Intimacy is applied so as to explain the ambivalence and resulting anxieties, and their alleviation.