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- Convenors:
-
Håkan Jönsson
(Lund University)
Maja Godina Golija (ZRC SAZU)
Ester Bardone (University of Tartu)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Food
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Food heritage is a field where cultural, political and economic actors interact, often with conflicting views on how edible pasts should be expressed, and who can legitimately express them. The panel invites papers on power, participation and transgression in relation to contested food heritages.
Long Abstract:
Food heritage is a field where cultural, political and economic actors interact, often with conflicting views on both how edible pasts should be expressed, and who can legitimately express them. As other forms of cultural heritage, food or culinary heritage is a mode of cultural production that reflects the past and projects into the future. We can see processes of heritagization in action when it comes to the branding of food products and destinations, often connected to gastronationalism, (i.e., images of the culinary excellence of a nation or region). However, there are also many examples of a denial or avoidance of certain historical foods and foodways as they may have become uncanny reminders of social injustice - violence, poverty, xenophobia, racism, ethnic conflicts, and so on.
This panel invites papers on power, participation and transgression in relation to contested food heritages. Papers may elaborate on topics such as:
• the selective use and remembering/forgetting of food traditions from the past (in terms of time period, ethnic or social group, etc);
• contested interpretations of similar foods (or dishes) as heritage in different sociocultural and political contexts;
• food heritage as an arena for political struggles and competition between and within nation-states or regions; contested ownership of food heritage as a cultural property;
• food heritage, gentrification and socio-economic inequalities (between producers as well as consumers);
• limits of food heritage and heritagization.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
"Palestinian-Israeli food" is still a rare and almost nonexistent category. It is not surprising due to the fierce debate around local foods in Israel. This paper will ask whether the foods created by Palestinian citizens of Israel can be considered "Israeli-Palestinian cuisine"?
Paper long abstract:
"Palestinian-Israeli food" is still a rare and almost nonexistent category, like water and oil - these do not mix. It is not surprising due to the fierce debate around local foods in Israel about their origin and to whom they "belong"? Based on ethnography in a Palestinian town in central Israel, this paper will ask whether the foods created by Palestinian citizens of Israel can be considered "Israeli-Palestinian cuisine"?
Israel's Palestinian citizens comprise 20% of Israel's population. They are excluded from the Jewish majority society and culture, both formally and informally. Except for a few mixed cities, most Palestinians live in Palestinian towns in which Israeli-Jews hardly visit. If doing so, it is mostly in search of authentic food, cheaper products, and car fixing. Drawing on intercultural encounters in town's food sites such as restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and the local market, I suggest that foods produced in these spaces are hybrid - new and contain components from both Palestinian and Jewish tradition. Some can view this process as an outcome of power relations in which the Palestinian business owners are forced to adjust their food to prosper or even to survive in the Israeli-Jewish oriented economic system. Nevertheless, I would like to argue that these foods may represent the roots of an innovative and controversial "Palestinian-Israeli food" as opposed to Palestinian food outside of Israel that evolves differently.
Paper short abstract:
The symbolic and heritage value of food is explicit in ethnic festivals. This paper deals with Finnish American foods and festivals. I will focus especially on two specific foods that have become typical Finnish American foods even though their interpretation as such can be contested.
Paper long abstract:
Food is an important marker of ethnic identity. It can be seen both as a personal way for someone to feel connected to their ethnic roots and as a way to publicly express ones ethnicity. Food is also one of the main expressions of cultural and ethnic identity within immigrants. In the United States many different immigrant groups maintain and celebrate their ethnic and cultural identity and often this is done with food. Although Finnish Americans may not be as famous for their food traditions as some other ethnicities, they also express their ethnic identity and background with food. The immigrant foods are often creolized or hybridization versions of the original versions. Usually specific immigrant food items become symbolic expressions of cultural and ethnical identity and heritage even if in some cases these foods are not that known in their country of origin. The symbolic and heritage value of different foods become even more explicit within different ethnic festivals and celebrations.
In this paper I’m going to show what kind of food is presented as Finnish American at different Finnish American festivals and how the heritagization of these foods is done. I will focus especially on two specific foods that have become known as typical Finnish American foods, mojakka and pasties and how they have become heritagized as Finnish American foods even though their interpretation as such can be contested.
Paper short abstract:
Local culinary experiences facilitate intercultural interactions by means of social dining events created by European hosts in their homes for tourists. By opening their private life and creating menus reflecting their views of food heritage, they contribute to the circulation of new references.
Paper long abstract:
Tourism and gastronomy imply a dynamic articulation between global and local consciousness and between global and local cultures. Contemporary social and technologic conditions have promoted the emergence of new ways of experiencing such connections that are yet to be studied. Today, travelers in pursuit of culturally immersive meals explore virtual marketplaces offering repertoires of food experiences created by local dwellers, in order to fulfill a desire for “authenticity”.
This study looks into the ways local hosts in Barcelona, Rome and Paris interpret and produce culinary authenticity and mobilize their position as city dwellers to create dining experiences for international tourists in their homes. This research recovers the perspective of 35 local hosts through qualitative interviews and participant observations in Paris, Rome, and Barcelona.
An analysis of the data yields the hosts perspectives on the touristification of their homes implying giving access to strangers by means of constant interplays between the backstage and the frontstage, between the protection and the showcase of their private lives, elements that contextualize food consumption. Their vision of their food culture translates into their menu, and their cuisines become spaces where it is produced and reproduced in order to unfold what they perceive to represent a part of their food heritage that is inaccessible for tourists. By hosting at their homes, cooking, and presenting the personal story behind the recipes, local hosts build new ways of interaction, connection and information about local food heritage in the global stage moving away from archetypes promoted by mass tourism.
Paper short abstract:
Food is an important dimension of know-how, transmitted from generation to generation, mainly by orality. It gives a sense of power, identity and temporary continuity in the communities. But as a distinctive aspect of social and economic inequalities, it is conflictual and complex.
Paper long abstract:
The process of defining the bases of heritage are an elite construct and a political perspective of what shall be valued in a certain moment in time and in a certain political context. Populations, however are the agents of ancient recipes know how and preservation, by their individual, familiar, cultural and social memory. And they act and react differently towards the political impositions concerning food and ingredients. Their attitudes are deeply connected with their life stories, social status, and remembrance of poverty, hunger, scarcity, abundance and variety of food.
The idea of traditional food spread and shared by the elites is a(n) (re)invention of a reality from the past. The abundance of protein served in restaurants, differs from the reality of a large majority of homes, until the end of seventies of 20Th century. Bread, water, a low range of protein, salvage plants, cereals and leguminous were the main ingredients of really tasty food - but food of poverty.
Nowadays, the (almost) very same food arrives to the tables of elites and middle class, cooked the same way and with the same ingredients, but richer than before, in quantity and quality. Enjoyed by new consumers, this traditional food is either refused or (re)appropriated by traditional consumers of lower social and economic classes. Some of them simply refuse this heritage. As their life style improves, this kind of food is “forgotten”. Their descendent, however, reclaim this kind of food, as an inheritance, a heritage and a symbol of prestige.
Paper short abstract:
Covid19 has abruptly brought more attention to the commercialization and consumption of wild animals and stressed some discrepancies between culinary folk's traditions, and contemporary controversies in selective food memory. The paper aims at comparing scandalous culinary views in Italy and China.
Paper long abstract:
Right after the start of the Covid19 pandemic, the governor of Italian Veneto Region went on national television to blame Chinese people, stating that “we all saw them eating live rats”, prompting a stark response from Chinese Government officials. Right after this faux pas, Italian social media showed pictures of ready to eat sun-dried rats in postwar Veneto, a region where the city Vicenza is known for its eating cats' culinary history.
Meanwhile, in China, the Government drafted a new legislative decision on the consumption of wild animals, after the shut-down of the Wuhan biggest wet market, the first stage of Covid-19, trying to cope with national and international critics. However, it seems that dog meat has long been part of folks' culinary culture in China, with a saying stating that: even Gods can’t stand the delicacy of dog meat.
In recent years, a popular Italian tv cooking show had to fire one of its most known hosts because he talked about cooking cats. However, ancient cookbooks dating back to the 16th century show that cat recipes were popular among the élites.
Those controversies tell us a lot not only about the selective memory of food heritage, especially the passage from scarcity to abundance and the taboo it triggers regarding the past; but it is also useful to understand mainstream speciesism and the commoditization and “pet-ification”.
Through a comparative approach and a selection of case studies, this presentation aims at discussing different approaches on those subjects in Italy and China.