Gananath Obeyesekere

Symbolic Foods: Pregnancy Cravings and the Envious Female

Abstract In my article I intend to show that the pregnancy cravings by Sri Lankan women constitute a system of personal symbols that must be understood in relation to the female role and the psychological problems engendered by it. I define personal symbols as those operating simultaneously at the level of both personality and culture. Through the notion of personal symbols, I intend to bridge the conventional distinction between private and public symbols and between culture and emotion. I show that pregnancy desires, which may be constituted as symptoms in the West, have been converted into personal symbols in South Asia since antiquity and given public meaning and validation.