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Creating Terroir.Créer du terroir. Une perspective anthropologique de la Nouvelle Cuisine nordique comme une expression de l’identité Nordique.: An Anthropological Perspective on New Nordic Cuisine as an Expression of Nordic Identity.
Abstract
En examinant la Nouvelle Cuisine Nordique – un discours contemporain basé sur les produits et les manières de cuisine « autochtones » à la région nordique - cet article explore la cuisine localisée en tant que fondement de l’analyse de la vague contemporaine de sentiments identitaires dans les pays nordiques au 21è siècle. En (re)créant un terroir nordique, la Nouvelle Cuisine Nordique permet aux « autochtones » d’ingérer un paysage (culturel), et de consommer une version matérielle de l’identité locale et régionale. Il sera montré comment l’identité est un concept qui par bien des aspects reste flou, mais qui peut être ingéré en tant que « nature » par le biais de la cuisine localisée, pour devenir, selon les termes d’Appadurai (1981), « un fait social hautement condensé », et qui établit « le Nordique » comme le marqueur d’une identité collective dans la région Nordique.
... Last but not least, NNC has received some scholarly attention in recent years, especially regarding the genealogy of the movement (Tholstrup Hermansen, 2012 ;Bergflødt et al., 2013 ;Byrkjeflot et al., 2013 ;Jönsson, 2013 ;Leer, 2016a). Several studies have accentuated the movement's use of the concept of terroir to highlight the specificity of the Nordic region (Larsen and Österlund-Pötzsch, 2013) and to create a post-nationalist, Nordic movement (Tholstrup Hermansen, 2012). ...
... Last but not least, NNC has received some scholarly attention in recent years, especially regarding the genealogy of the movement (Tholstrup Hermansen, 2012 ;Bergflødt et al., 2013 ;Byrkjeflot et al., 2013 ;Jönsson, 2013 ;Leer, 2016a). Several studies have accentuated the movement's use of the concept of terroir to highlight the specificity of the Nordic region (Larsen and Österlund-Pötzsch, 2013) and to create a post-nationalist, Nordic movement (Tholstrup Hermansen, 2012). Others have been more critical, questioning the ideological framing of Nordic whiteness as superior (Andreassen, 2014) as well as the elite character of the project ). ...
... This paper is by no means the first to discuss NNC (Tholstrup Hermansen, 2012 ;Bergflødt et al., 2013 ;Byrkjeflot et al., 2013 ;Jönsson, 2013 ;Leer, 2016a), but it is the first, at least to our knowledge, to empirically challenge its most central tenet: that of a gastronomic Nordic unity. In his exploration of the regional identity of NNC, Tholstrup Hermansen (2012) argues that terroir "acts as a pseudo-geographical concept that allows for a transnational interpretation of a coherent Nordic identity: the Nordic folk." ...
This article is a cross-national comparison of how food is promoted on tourism websites offering information about Denmark and Sweden-two countries with big national projects targeting the promotion of culinary excellence, following the initiation of "New Nordic Cuisine" (NNC) in 2004. The aim is to study similarities and differences in the projects of these two countries, both quantitatively and qualitatively. 21 out of 33 (approx. 64%) Danish texts referred to a shared Nordic culinary identity, whereas this was only the case in five out of 51 (approx. 10%) of the Swedish texts. Moreover, the qualitative analysis also revealed that "Nordic" cuisine was almost interchangeably connected to Danish cuisine, while in Sweden NNC was more peripheral and culinary excellence was construed as specifically Swedish. We thus criticise the generally accepted idea that NNC is a post-national food movement, seeing it instead as a means to achieve different gastronationalist ends for these two Nordic countries.
... As alluded above, and beyond the singular, multi-pronged influence of the environment (e.g., soil, sun, water, wind, etc.), terroir is an emergent property of ecotopic human-environment interaction, as it relates to the role of human actors in using their knowledge to (re)produce place-based goods, as well as their role in defining taste (sensu Bourdieu 1984). In anthropology, research on terroir has paid close attention to the marketing of terroir products (Aurier et al. 2005); territoriality and spatial influence of the soil to produce quality tastes and foodstuffs (Paolisso 2007); the importance of acknowledging producers as mediators between these products and consumers (Demossier 2011); and the use of terroir goods to create regional or national culinary identities (Hermansen 2012). Most recently, I should add, I and other anthropologists have also sought to use terroir as a framework to "locate the networks of practice and meaning that rely upon but also reinforce how and why terroir concerns a relationship between taste and place" (Trubek 2020, in reference to our special issue on contesting terroir [Lesh and Lally 2020]; italics in the original). ...
... In the context of the taste of place, it is perhaps worthwhile to note that taste is in itself a social fact in France (Durkheim 1965; Trubek 2008), i.e., one which is culturally shared and defined. Moreover, we might consider from an ecotopic perspective of human-nature interaction the ingestion of "nature" through localized cuisine (Hermansen 2012), through which identity via consumed local foodstuffs becomes a "highly condensed social fact" (see Appadurai 1981). Taken together, I argue these strands of the social fact concept provide a lens in which to understand how placebased wines-as emergent from terroir interactions-can be viewed as forms of social or cultural capital and markers of identity (of product, place, and people). ...
Currently available at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1610041972377958
This dissertation analyzes how winegrowers in central Ohio and the eastern French region of Alsace respond to changes in their vineyards, wine cellars, and tasting rooms, as well as how changing ecological conditions influence changing social processes (and vice versa). I build upon the French notion of terroir to reconceptualize it as a theoretical model of social-ecological “sense-making” that helps people make sense of the various interactive components of the winegrowing system. Such a framework also provides individuals with a guide for understanding through their sensory faculties what an idealized system of winegrowing feels like. By analyzing how they define the taste of place, I argue that winegrowers and others are able to pinpoint not only changes in their respective landscapes, but also opportunities for adaptation and/or innovation.
Amid discourses of global climate change, winegrowers are experiencing its differential effects. Central Ohio winegrowers tend to be more concerned with increased rainfall and freezing temperatures, while those in Alsace are concerned with periods of less rainfall and very high temperatures. These conditions appear to prompt winegrowers to (re)consider whether they can plant new varietals, how they may intervene in the fermentation process, and what wines are available for their clientele. In short, vitivinicultural practices are invariably linked to cultural behaviors that continue to change over time and space.
Bringing together multisensory ethnography and multispecies perspectives, and based on my case studies and each new vintage, I characterized the extent to which changing landscapes influence the production and elaboration of place-based goods. Accordingly, I asked: (1) What changes do winegrowers perceive in their winegrowing landscapes? (2) How do they adapt to changes in winegrowing conditions? (3) How do these changes influence winegrowers’ constructions of terroir and the “taste of place”? I interviewed over 24 winegrowers, as well as their co-workers, family members, and volunteers. I also incorporated into my analysis characteristics of local birds, yeasts, plants, weather, and trellising systems.
The principal chapters of this dissertation are composed of four articles, which are synthesized in my conclusion. The first article frames my understanding of terroir in central Ohio and Alsace. The second article presents my multisensory approach. The third article considers who (or what) comprises the winegrowing system. And the fourth article uses actor-network theory to trace interactions between and among terroir actants. While the actual taste of a wine may be different from year to year as a result of local conditions and winegrower practices, I demonstrate that the proverbial “taste” of a place does not in itself change, as winegrowers make incremental adaptations to maintain a sense of consistency. Winegrowers, vines, and wines from Ohio or Alsace are still Ohioan or Alsatian, despite changing practices or cultural norms that result from changes in weather, legislation, and/or market demands. As I have learned through more than 18 months of fieldwork, this study of terroir reveals how winegrowers and the plants in their care are able to reproduce, redefine, or in some cases create anew, place-based identities in times of change.
... Both Nordic interior design and fashion have come to be associated with positive qualities of simplicity and craftsmanship, and the conceptual aesthetics of ''Nordicness'' have spread into other domains (Andersen et al., 2019: 216;Østergaard et al., 2014: 254). Nordic food has become defined with symbolic values such as 'purity' and 'freshness', qualities which, over time, have become intrinsic to the idea of ''the Nordics'' (Hermansen, 2012). According to Skou and Munch (2016: 2), this fascination seems to be ''fuelled by different global, political, and economic trends and the reactualisation of the Nordic welfare states as historical role models.'' ...
... These findings support previous research referencing the idea of ''Nordic Cool'' as an international marketing tactic (e.g. Andersen et al., 2019;Skou and Munch, 2016;Hermansen, 2012). The conscious effort of these brands to associate themselves with what they consider to be Nordic values is also evident from overt declarations found on several websites. ...
Fuelled by political and economic trends in the 21st century, the concepts “New Nordic” and “Nordic Cool” have entered the global scene in design, cuisine, entertainment, and general lifestyle (Østergaard et al., 2014, Skou and Munch, 2016, Andersen et al., 2019). Simultaneously, due to globalisation, individuals today are subjected to a higher number of language contact situations than ever before, in face-to-face communication as well as through foreign products and international advertisements. This study explores how Nordic orthographic features are capitalised on in international marketing to elevate the images of various brands. Nordic words and graphemes can be used to evoke positive associations that the consumer may have relating to the region (e.g. associations of ‘nature’, ‘simplicity’, or even ‘luxury’), or simply to index foreigness, globalism, or exclusivity (Jaworski, 2015a).
... Schousboe 2014). The elite chefs adhering to the New Nordic Cuisine frequently refer to terroir in the Nordic context, pointing to the advantages of the Nordic conditions -such as many hours of daylight -for various food produce (Hermansen 2012;Meyer & Ehler 2006). In this context, the concept, "local food" is closely related to and sometimes overlapping with terroir. ...
... The notion of place-related food covers a plethora of concerns ranging from taste, nutrition and health to patriotism, politics, ecology, and ethics (see e.g. Amilien, Torjusen & Vittersø 2005;Hermansen 2012;Bendix & Fenske 2014). As pointed out by Lucy R. Lippard, "the lure of the local is that undertone to modern life that connects it to the past we know so little and the future we are aimlessly concocting" (Lippard 1997:7). ...
... As an example from TH's field experience, one of her key questions was to understand what influenced the restaurant's culinary style, especially its relation to New Nordic Cuisine-an inevitable comparison when discussing the fine dining scene in Denmark-and whether and how it differed. TH started by reading relevant literature including the original New Nordic Manifesto (Risvik et al., 2008) and academic writing about New Nordic cuisine (Andreassen, 2014;Hermansen, 2012;Jönsson, 2013;Leer, 2016;Neuman and Leer, 2018;Risbo et al., 2013). The manifesto had established some key principles for this culinary movement such as 'simplicity', 'purity', and 'freshness' (Risvik et al., 2008). ...
... Or, as described by Pablo Alonso González and Eva Parga Dans, a notion that involves 'the taste of wine and its organoleptic properties, and ultimately the territorial, political, and economic model upon which the wine world is based' (Alonso and Dans 2018: 186). From this perspective, by highlighting locality in the production of value, the concept of terroir necessarily embodies a political economy that markets 'place' into a global audience (see also e.g., Demossier 2011;Hermansen 2012). ...
... The dish is not arranged on a plate but is served on a stone, which reinforces the natural impression. Earth and stone stand for the terroir, for the region that determines the taste of the dish (Hermansen 2012). ...
... The dish is not arranged on a plate but is served on a stone, which reinforces the natural impression. Earth and stone stand for the terroir, for the region that determines the taste of the dish (Hermansen 2012). ...
Food is more than just nutrition. Its preparation, presentation and consumption is a multifold communicative practice which includes the meal's design and its whole field of experience. How is food represented in cookbooks, product packaging or in paintings? How is dining semantically charged? How is the sensuality of eating treated in different cultural contexts? In order to acknowledge the material and media-related aspects of eating as a cultural praxis, experts from media studies, art history, literary studies, philosophy, experimental psychology, anthropology, food studies, cultural studies and design studies share their specific approaches.
... For example, among Kosovars today arguments that trace current practices to the ancient past have a sentimental value attached to them. The arguments are based mainly on the linguistic and historical sources that identify Kosova as the continuous territorial and linguistic identity of Dardania (Mirdita 1978;Stipčević 1980;Wilkes 1995;Malcolm 1998;Shukriu 2004). Canolli (2017: 291) also says that, There is no available evidence that allows us to accurately analyze or describe the food culture of ancient times and findings of contemporary research re an insuf-ficient basis for strong historical claims regarding culinary continuity. ...
In this essay, I describe and discuss the ways in which tradition is demonstrated, staged and understood in Kosova restaurants. After the 1999 war in Kosova, restaurants emerged as new places, privately public and publicly private, that display local aspirations and intentions to re-invent the roots of tradition and construct routes to Europe. In addition, they illustrate the intention to modernise, and provide routines for social life and conviviality. Within the context of gastronationalism and culinary diversity, I use local language derived concepts such as katunopia and sofraisation to argue that Kosova gastronomy is undergoing continuous change and transformation characterised by a process of searching, combining, inventing and re-vitalising ‘tradition’ to build a new culinary identity.
... Noma has skillfully deployed diverse modes of branding in cookbooks, PR and all kinds of media in their quest for global fame and Michelin stars (Leer, 2016). While Noma claims a certain "informal atmosphere," it is also a truly exclusive, challenging experience to be able to enjoy, for example, live ants and shrimps (Hermansen, 2012). BRØD is a bakery intent on being anything but "exclusive," challenging or authoritative. ...
Purpose
This paper aims to develop place branding theory toward the accommodation of a multifaceted understanding of value and value negotiation by Nordic branding actors by way of answering the following question: How is Nordicness appropriated by Nordic branding actors and what value regimes are drawn on in the process?
Design/methodology/approach
Using field data from a selection of branding actors and sectors in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, a qualitative analysis of Nordic branding performances is used to unpack the negotiations of valuation of worth.
Findings
The analysis identified three principle orders of worth behind Nordicness (civic, green and inspired) that are negotiated through compromises between orders of industry and domestic and by contesting the orders of fame and market. The findings indicate how Nordicness is performed as principle worths and tensions and how these are rendered meaningful as propositions of “value as difference” as they are performed in practice by brand actors.
Originality/value
Several studies focus on how place branding “adds value;” however, few studies have been aimed at unpacking how a “value universe” is negotiated as a more complex understanding of worth or “value.” This study thus opens up for branding heterogeneity, which signifies awareness of competing notions and orders of worth among small- and medium-sized enterprises and other central stakeholders; this could further inspire interdisciplinary, value-based research into the potential contingencies of (product) branding and place branding in other contexts and regions.
... Paxson 2012, 188-89). Native foods are prepared and ingested as a way to connect with the "authentic North" (Hermansen 2012). Leaders in defining modern Scandinavian food, gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer and head chef of Copenhagen's celebrated Noma restaurant Ren e Redzepi, established a think tank and blog, the Nordic Food Lab, in 2008. ...
“Who would have thought that out of all the dishes on our menu, Americans would go nuts for a salad mixed with a dark savory paste of fermented tea?” The demand for Burma Superstar’s laphet thoke (fermented tea leaf salad) came initially as a surprise to San Francisco-restaurateur Desmond Tan. By 2018 the restaurant’s fermented tea leaf salad was the fourth most popular restaurant item in the country on Yelp. The dish’s nascent stardom is a dramatic departure from a colonial-era description of its key ingredient, laphet (fermented tea), as a “putrescent mass of smashed up leaves.” Witnessing the success of Burma Superstar’s laphet thoke, and a crescendo of interest in Burmese cuisine following Myanmar’s democratic reforms in 2012, an array of American restaurants has offered various versions of it, and dozens of food writers have been quick to publish recipes for it. In spite of the salad’s new-found cult following, laphet has remained rare for chefs and home cooks. This article focuses on laphet thoke, and argues that its origins, material properties, and culinary innovations have contributed to its popularity among American foodies. And, through the example of Tan’s adaptations of the salad and its key ingredient, this piece reveals the processes by which some exotic foods are modified and materialize as trendy fare.
... Estas cocinas están determinadas por los conocimientos, capital, expectativas y ambiciones de los productores y de los clientes. Algunas dan lugar a tendencias gastronómicas a la vez elitistas y "étnicas" como la "nueva cocina nórdica", la cocina "nuevo latino" y la "cocina novoandina", que son el resultado de abundantes recursos, tangibles e intangibles, y discursos que se nutren de la globalización y el cosmopolitismo, pero al mismo tiempo los desafían (Fonseca 2005;Matta 2013;Tholstrup Hermansen 2012). Otras cocinas construyen su especificidad, localidad y relevancia sobre el registro de la familiaridad o la cotidianeidad, la practicidad, la estabilidad y la seguridad. ...
Este artículo tiene como objetivo aproximarse a las cocinas patrimoniales desde la mirada de quienes lo sustentan y promueven a diario. Nuestro enfoque se desmarca de las visiones más institucionales del patrimonio alimentario, aquellas impulsadas por los gobiernos, promotores culturales, agentes económicos y organismos internacionales como la UNESCO. Tomando como ejemplo cuatro restaurantes de distinta gama en la ciudad de Lima, mostraremos cómo chefs, cocineros y restauranteros proponen y ejecutan versiones "ordinarias" del patrimonio alimentario y como éstas se rigen por el uso de representaciones, valores y jerarquías relacionados con sus historias individuales y proyectos de vida. Estas cocinas patrimoniales se caracterizan por permitir modos de creación flexibles y acordes a las capacidades y necesidades de quienes manejan negocios culinarios y gastronómicos. En suma, veremos que estas cocinas estimulan una visión del patrimonio alimentario más arraigada en los desafíos cotidianos y futuros que en el pasado y en concepciones predeterminadas de la cultura.
... This is evident in the branding exercises of the New Nordic Cuisine, not the least when it comes to herbs used as spices that in recent years have become more and more prominent players in the Nordic cuisine, along with the narrative of the Nordic terroir. The cool climate and the interplay between dark and light in the Nordic countries is said to cause a slow growth and leave its characteristics in the product (Hermansen, 2012;Risvik, 2007), hence reflecting Nordic landscape and culture. ...
... Fourth, taste and gastronomy have become prominent new tendencies, following the inception of the New Nordic Food Cuisine in 2004, which is based on the virtues of 'taste', as well as local, seasonal and traditional products of the highest quality (The Nordic Council of Ministers, 2012). According to Hermansen (2012), New Nordic Food (NNF) is a way to express identity in the Nordic countries, an 'exercise in nostalgia'. However, NNF is as much a construct as it is a rediscovery of a historically rooted food culture, and the 'tastemakers' in the NNF are a group of chefs and food critics, who have discerned the taste of the Nordic for the general public (Byrkjeflot, Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2013). ...
... In 2004, New Nordic Cuisine (henceforth NNC) was launched through the publication of a manifesto signed by a number of male chefs from across the Nordic countries (Skårup 2013). The ambition was to create an innovative cuisine based exclusively on Nordic ingredients and produces, while remaining true to Nordic cooking traditions (Hermansen 2012). The movement hereby challenged the dominant ideas of "good taste" and, most notably, the pre-eminence of the French and Mediterranean cuisines (Jönsson 2013). ...
This article analyses the constructions and negotiations of masculine identity in New Nordic Cuisine. It focuses on cookbooks by the leading figures, namely Claus Meyer and René Redzepi. The article argues that Meyer and Redzepi represent different negotiations of Nordic culinary masculinity played out in distinct culinary spaces: respectively the domestic and the professional kitchen. At the same time, both men make great effort to distance their culinary practices not only from a traditional understanding of women’s everyday cooking, but also from the food and gender practices of hypermasculine chefs. Meyer and Redzepi both strike a precarious balance: not becoming too close to “the feminine,” but simultaneously remaining distinct from traditional, culinary masculinity.
... If we were to believe the media coverage of NNC in the past decade, we might think that NNC is exemplary of an alternative food movement that has achieved significant 'mainstream' success in both the food production and social milieus (Goulding, 2013). Such notions have also been perpetuated by some researchers (e.g., Hermansen, 2012). This chapter investigates the extent to which it can be argued that such mainstreaming effects have indeed occurred in the Danish context. ...
New Nordic Cuisine (NNC) has undoubtedly placed Scandinavia on the culinary map. This region, which before the 2000s was a black spot on the global gastronomic food map, has now become a site of pilgrimage for foodies from around the world who praise the values of a locavore, vegetable-focused Nordic cuisine with an innovative culinary expression and an emphasis on place-based sustainable production. It has also gained much attention at a political level and sparked a renewed interest in food politics in the region. But how much has NNC really changed Nordic food practices?
... However, it is still linked primarily to heritage for reasons of "authenticity" and marketing regional products and crafts. Here, le terroir does not represent a culture cut off from the world; on the contrary, in a living environment, which is shaped by broader influences, a terroir perception of heritage stresses a dynamic between people and place that considers the wider world as a creative factor of this dynamic (see Hermansen 2012). In this regard, le terroir remains bound to the local or regional while being open to the wider world. ...
This article explores the relationship between religiosity and prosperity through a particular ethnographic case from Mali and interrogates the suitability of applying models that use the lens of neoliberalism to this relationship. In the eyes of many Muslims in West Africa, the material prosperity displayed by Muslim scholars indexes a pious life based on the practice of Islamic precepts. In contrast to neoliberal interpretations, I analyze a resilient mode of prosperity in rural southwest Mali associated with a figure of moral success that Malians nostalgically date back to a precolonial Mande era: “the noble Muslim.” I do so through an in-depth portrait of a particular individual who described himself as “Rasta Muslim” Moussa, whose life epitomized a diffuse traditional ethics and notions of prosperity in the region. Excavating the sedimentation of experience back in time, I investigate how Moussa interpreted the contemporary noble Muslim through a dynamic of le terroir. This concept stresses a cultural formation that stems from a creative engagement with the soil as a vector of tradition in dialogue with larger contemporary Rasta influences.
... Thus, the basic assertion of this article is that the New Nordic Kitchen did not arrive from out of nowhere, nor is it the result of the initiatives of one or two brilliant individuals or an orchestrated dissemination process. Although these factors may all be involved, it is important to understand the emergence of the New Nordic Kitchen as an integrated element within a social and cultural change process (Hermansen 2012), with a focus on food education and upbringing, not only at schools but in a broader social context. In order to demonstrate this, we invite the reader on a journey through Danish cookbooks for children from 1971 to 2016. ...
The New Nordic Kitchen has conquered the world, Agern and the Nordic Food Hall at Grand Central Station in New York City and Noma in Copenhagen serving as notable examples. Normally this development is perceived as something that came out of nowhere, or as the result of the initiatives of specific individuals such as René Redzepi, chef at Noma. In this article, we will argue that it is part of a much broader cultural movement replacing precision, nutrition, and hygiene with pleasure, taste, and creativity as the center of kitchen culture, food education, and child upbringing. We support this argument by focusing on children's cookbooks published in Denmark during the period 1971–2016.
... Fourth, taste and gastronomy have become prominent new tendencies, following the inception of the New Nordic Food Cuisine in 2004, which is based on the virtues of 'taste', as well as local, seasonal and traditional products of the highest quality (The Nordic Council of Ministers, 2012). According to Hermansen (2012), New Nordic Food (NNF) is a way to express identity in the Nordic countries, an 'exercise in nostalgia'. However, NNF is as much a construct as it is a rediscovery of a historically rooted food culture, and the 'tastemakers' in the NNF are a group of chefs and food critics, who have discerned the taste of the Nordic for the general public (Byrkjeflot, Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2013). ...
The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expressed in the food system. We conduct a comparative case study involving three product categories: craft beer, specialty flour and organic broilers. Craft beer and specialty flour have undergone a revolution, in which new flavours, products, practices and social relations are generated; by contrast, organic broilers have remained a relatively stable product category. The case studies demonstrate that the revolution is not just taking place in one domain, but it implies a multidimensional reconfiguration of the food system where an emphasis on multiple quality aspects and diversification of the product category is important. However, food trends are not the invention of the individual producer, but serve as common conventions that products can be related to, although their interpretation is not pre-given. In addition, a transition presupposes a shared vision and a coordination of activities among the actors in the food system or the mobilization of new actors who share this vision.
... Finally we have connoisseurs, constantly on the lookout for new options for fine dining. In the convergence of these trends, traditional dishes and local produce are once again in vogue (Hermansen, 2012;Łuczaj et al., 2012;Svanberg & AEgisson, 2012;Bonow & Rytkönen, 2013). In this context, local specialties attract particular interest (Téchoueyres, 2001;Golija, 2013;Lysagh, 2013). ...
For the rural population in Sweden, fishing in lakes and rivers was of great importance until recently. Many fish species served as food or animal fodder, or were used to make glue and other useful products. But the receding of lakes in the nineteenth century, and the expansion of hydropower and worsening of water pollution in the twentieth, contributed to the decline of inland fisheries. At the same time, marine fish became more competitive on the Swedish food market. In some regions, however, certain freshwater species continued to be caught for household consumption well
into the twentieth century. One such species was the smelt (Osmerus eperlanus), which fifty years ago was still of economic importance. Nowadays, however, smelt is only caught in very low volumes; its role is therefore insignificant. In neighbouring
countries, however – such as Estonia, Lithuania, and Russia – it is still being exploited commercially. In Germany, where water quality has improved in rivers and restaurants have shown increasing interest in smelt, a successful revival for the fish as a regional and seasonal food can be seen. Smelt fishing has dimensions which are not only culinary, but social and cultural as well. Traditional ways of food preparation can be transformed into modern haute cuisine. Smelt fishing has the potential to develop
commercially in Sweden also.
... Flagship projects are often more difficult to achieve in peripheral areas because of the relative lack of capital but they do occur, as exemplified by the development of the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, which has proved to be an extremely significant branding element for the region (Andersson, 2012;Hall, Müller, & Saarinen, 2009) or Umeå's role as a European City of Culture 2014 (A ˚ kerlund & Müller, 2012). An alternative for many peripheral areas may be to focus on personality associations (Ashworth, 2009) and/or natural features for branding purposes, or even a blend of the two as evidence in the promotion of elements of the new Nordic cuisine (Byrkjeflot, Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2013;Hermansen, 2012). For example, Finnmark in Norway makes substantial use of North Cape as a socially constructed flagship element in its branding (Jacobsen, 2009). ...
... Chefs hautement qualifiés et consultants gastronomiques s'emploient à adapter des savoirs culinaires locaux et « traditionnels » aux exigences de la restauration de prestige (Pilcher 2012 ; Matta 2013). Les constants « jeux sur la tradition » opérés par chefs et restaurateurs (Suremain & Matta 2013) donnent lieu à des constructions patrimoniales nouvelles comme la Nordic Food (Thorlstrup Hermansen 2012), aussi bien qu'à des expressions gastronomiques « postmodernes », tels le courant Nuevo Latino (Fonseca 2005) et la « cuisine novo-andine » (Matta 2013). Toujours dans ses rapports avec les pratiques culturelles, le patrimoine alimentaire s'exprime aussi via la particularisation des productions agricoles locales. ...
RÉSUMÉ – Ce chapitre aborde la question de la patrimonialisation alimentaire au Pérou en fonction d'expériences de recherche récentes menées par l'auteur. Il essaie de porter un regard diachro-nique sur l'émergence du concept de « patrimoine alimentaire » et d'interroger la place du chercheur en fonction de ses motivations et intérêts vis-à-vis de ceux mobilisés par les porteurs plus ou moins institutionnels du patrimoine alimentaire, et d'apporter une réflexion critique sur son investissement à la lumière du courant des critical heritage studies. L'analyse s'appuie sur l'étude de deux pro-jets de patrimonialisation alimentaire qui, par leur ampleur et objectifs, sont fortement contrastés, voire opposés. MOTS-CLÉS – patrimoine alimentaire, place du chercheur, por-teurs du patrimoine, Unesco, patrimoines locaux, Pérou considérés par un groupe social comme un héritage partagé, comme un bien commun. Plus précisément, il « comprend l'ensem-ble des produits agricoles, bruts et transformés, les savoirs et savoir-faire mobilisés qui leur sont associés (techniques culturales et culinaires) ainsi que les modes de distribution alimentaire. Il ren-voie également aux manières de tables, aux formes de sociabilité, à la symbolique alimentaire et aux objets de la table » (Bessière & Tibère 2010 : 1). Dans les aspects relatifs à sa mise en oeuvre, le patrimoine alimentaire implique la sélection, la décontextualisation (ou recontextualisation), l'adaptation et la réinterprétation d'élé-ments d'une culture alimentaire en particulier. Il s'agit donc d'une construction historique, sociale et culturelle qui ne peut être expli-quée que par le rôle qui lui est attribué et par les intérêts qu'elle est censée servir (Espeitx 2004). En combinant « préservation et innovation , stabilité et dynamisme, et reproduction et création » (Bessière 1998 : 27), le patrimoine alimentaire est destiné à pro-mouvoir de nouvelles significations sociales pouvant être mobilisées aussi bien à des fins politiques, économiques, culturel-les, religieuses ou quotidiennes. Les études sur les patrimoines alimentaires, bien que relative-ment récentes, offrent pourtant un vaste éventail de questions abordées par différentes disciplines et champs d'étude (anthropo-logie, histoire, sociologie rurale, ethnobotanique, études touristiques…), selon diverses approches et méthodologies, et à partir de différentes régions du monde. Si l'on doit tirer une pre-mière conclusion sur le nombre croissant de travaux sur le sujet, c'est bien que les patrimoines alimentaires, considérés à la fois comme « actifs globaux » et « ressources locales » (Alvarez 2008), sont des constructions sociales complexes, servant des objectifs de nature diverse. La façon dont ce patrimoine prend forme est en ce sens liée aux besoins et opportunités identifiés par des populations, par des groupes sociaux organisés et par des États. Afin d'obtenir une meilleure compréhension du phénomène – ainsi que de ses principaux enjeux –, nous envisageons ici les champs d'application de la patrimonialisation alimentaire en tant qu'ils ressortissent de deux catégories (parmi d'autres possibles), en nous appuyant sur la 21 tries to develop a diachronic approach on the emergence of the concept of « food heritage », to question the researchers' status according to their motivations and interests vis-à-vis to those of heritage stakeholders, and to provide a critical consideration of their investment in the light of critical heritage studies. The analysis draws on the study of two projects of food heritagization which, by reason of their scope and aims, are strongly contrasted, or even opposed.
... Flagship projects are often more difficult to achieve in peripheral areas because of the relative lack of capital but they do occur, as exemplified by the development of the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, which has proved to be an extremely significant branding element for the region (Andersson, 2012;Hall, Müller, & Saarinen, 2009) or Umeå's role as a European City of Culture 2014 (Å kerlund & Müller, 2012). An alternative for many peripheral areas may be to focus on personality associations (Ashworth, 2009) and/or natural features for branding purposes, or even a blend of the two as (Byrkjeflot, Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2013;Hermansen, 2012). For example, Finnmark in Norway makes substantial use of North Cape as a socially constructed flagship element in its branding (Jacobsen, 2009). ...
Place branding and marketing has become essential for the promotion of tourist destinations. Yet despite the significance of environmental attributes for place branding there is surprisingly little research on the impacts of climate change on place brand values. The paper examines these issues with respect to the development of Santa-related place myths in high-latitude place branding strategies and highlights the way in which the Santa place myth is built on the social construction of Santa's winter home replete with snow, pine trees and reindeer. The imagined country of Christmas is, therefore, regarded as extremely susceptible to climate change and while some locations seek to guarantee snow security to tourists others may be more marginal. The paper, therefore, concludes that from a tourism marketing and planning standpoint, it is essential that the immaterial dimensions of destination promotion, such as place branding, require as much attention with respect to the effects of climate change as do the material.
Comparing three culinary movements with a distinct focus on sustainability the article explores how collective organizational actors interact with higher education institutions when promoting sustainable change in the culinary field. The article shows how the culinary movements collaborate with, emulate, and adopt practices from higher education institutions and scientific disciplines in their efforts to drive sustainable culinary change. We specify four types of interactions through which the culinary movements engage with higher education institutions: formal collaboration, imitative practices, enlisting academics, and emulating academic events. Our findings contribute to previous discussions in two ways. First, we show how collective organizational actors and higher education institutions collaborate and exchange knowledge and practices in a way that serves both parties’ quest for sustainable change and legitimacy. Moreover, we show how the presence of field-level goals (i.e., sustainability) encourages multidirectional interaction and translation of practices, as common field-level goals heightens focus on similarity rather than difference.
Nas últimas décadas, há um expressivo interesse acerca dos assuntos relacionados aos alimentos e à alimentação, revelando uma crescente procura por produtos com qualidades diferenciadas que remetem à origem e à produção artesanal. Entre as tendências da gastronomia contemporânea, vem crescendo a utilização de produtos denominados “tradicionais”, “locais” e “orgânicos”, que contem traços de singularidade. Nesse artigo, procuramos entender como se dá a inclusão de alimentos singulares na gastronomia contemporânea a partir da relação entre produtores e chefs. Na cidade de Porto Alegre (no estado de Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil), desenvolvimos uma pesquisa junto à um chef que utiliza produtos locais, bem como à um produtor que fornece restaurantes. Os dados da pesquisa mostram que o(s) chef(s) procura(m) produtos locais principalmente pelo sabor e a qualidade, mas também pela busca de identidade e reconhecimento profissional. Percebimos que a interação entre chefs, produtores e consumidores pode estar ocasionando um novo espaço de socialização e de comercialização entre estes atores.
Societal Impact Statement
Foraging wild food plants is sometimes perceived as a conservation threat or, alternatively, as an opportunity for sustainable development. Little is known of how foragers themselves define and ensure sustainable foraging. Here, we collaboratively assessed the activities and motivations of the forager community in Norway in order to achieve a combined social and ecological assessment of foraging sustainability. Current foraging of wild food plants in Norway contributes to an increased appreciation of nature rather than generating negative environmental impact and is hence an opportunity for sustainable development.
Summary
Wild food plants are well recognized as local sources of nutrition that can contribute to food security, but foraging is sometimes viewed as a threat to biological conservation. Here, we characterize and assess sustainable foraging in Norway through transdisciplinary research co‐constructed with the Norwegian Association for Mycology and Foraging.
We conducted 19 face‐to‐face interviews with key stakeholders and produced an online questionnaire returned by 219 recreational and commercial foragers to enquire about what species are harvested, by whom and how, where do foragers learn and what are their perspectives on the sustainability of foraging.
Foraging fosters a strong connection with the natural environment. Foragers decide when and how much can be harvested considering location, plant and plant part being harvested. They pay attention to native plants' conservation status and local abundance and plant individual's survival after foraging and aim to not spread invasive species.
We define sustainable foraging as the knowledge and practices that enable enriching forager–biodiversity relationships over time. Such a definition can support collaborative sustainability efforts between the academic community and civil society.
Although now extinct, the naked (i.e. hull-free) barley variety Thorebygg was once an additive grain used in the brewing of farmhouse ale in Norway between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries and possibly earlier. This paper uses the concept of fictive terroir, combining social and cultural factors with its natural properties, to show how it was used in brewing ale. These factors explain the historical cultivation of Thorebygg and its decline under industrialization from the mid-nineteenth century. Thorebygg was probably cultivated as early as the Middle Ages on swidden plots, and later also on fertile open farmland. Hulled barley was the principal form of grain used in brewing and small quantities of other grains, such as Thorebygg, were added to improve the quality of the ale in color, taste and strength.
The Náttúra dining concept developed by Kitchen Theory ran from September to December 2014 in London. It was inspired by the New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto which has influenced not only cuisine in the Nordic countries but international gastronomy more broadly for a number of years now. This multisensory dining concept incorporated dishes that have subsequently appeared in peer-reviewed academic research, including in this journal, thus highlighting the potential of practice-led gastrophysics research (as in research that was designed to optimize the eye-appeal of the plating of one of the dishes served on the menu). By incorporating different nature/natural sounds with each pair of courses (namely the sounds of the earth, wind, fire, and water), this multisensory dining concept bridges the contemporary interest in ‘sonic seasoning’ and the increasingly common approach of incorporating atmospheric soundscapes into gastronomic dining experiences. At the same time, nature videos projected onto the wall of the dining room, together with the use of atmospheric ambient aromas incorporated into several of the dishes further helped to transport guests to a range of different immersive multisensory environments, all loosely connected by an Icelandic theme.
Historically, planners, community development groups, and other place-engaged organizations and practitioners have worked to elevate the importance of place and placemaking in economically, socially, and environmentally responsible development. However, recent studies have presented the concept of placemaking from professionally different perspectives using a variety of definitions to both rationalize and operationalize this still somewhat nebulous concept. This ambiguity surrounding the term placemaking is further compounded by the use of three different types of spellings for the term in the research literature, with none of the spellings having a clear, consistent, or universally accepted definition aligned to it. Without a common understanding of placemaking as a concept, or how placemaking works theoretically, measuring the value or impact placemaking has as a process on community development is conjectural. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the academic research literature related to placemaking over the past 5 years, describe the current state of placemaking as a concept based on the issues raised in past literature, identify key theoretical principles that consistently support placemaking as it is being used in the research literature, and then use these principles to propose a theoretical model describing how placemaking works as a process. The theoretical model proposed in this work is offered for further examination, description, and testing and as a foundation for future research on the role placemaking plays in community development professional practice.
Throughout Nordic history, angelica ( Angelica archangelica) has been a valued resource, often referred to as sweet. This article is inspired by multispecies studies and examines the role of sweetness in the relationship between this plant and Nordic peoples. A review of the ethnobotanical literature is woven together with historical, philological, and ethnographic data to trace angelica's properties and uses throughout Nordic history. Angelica's area of distribution expanded over time and its carbohydrate content increased in some semi-domesticated varieties. In turn, humans relied on it as a food source and conveyor of cultural meaning and value. We find that the plant has been associated with different qualities at different times and that it became sweet through time both materially and symbolically. However, angelica has now mostly disappeared from Nordic diets, while other ingredients in early twentieth century dessert recipes have remained. Our interdisciplinary analysis indicates that symbolism, rather than taste, may explain the sweet character that is associated with angelica in the Nordic region.
This article examines how central Ohio winegrowers are able to manufacture “the taste of place” in the midst of a dominant global discourse that maintains a rhetoric of anthropogenic climate change. Importantly, this work positions climate as not necessarily changing but rather as seemingly always being in a state of change. While relatively few winegrowers in central Ohio have been growing grapes and making wine for a few decades, many more are relatively new to the artisanal and industrial wine landscape, which includes added pressures beyond climate (such as changes in the global market or legislation) that influence decision-making and ongoing landscape transformations. Drawing on interviews and participant observations conducted in central Ohio, as well as in Alsace, eastern France, this article argues that constant adaptations to multiple terroir contexts are liminal acts that illustrate how terroir is being “reverse engineered” (i.e., in a constant state of being made or even conceptualized a posteriori) in a region that is facing social and ecological change.
This article examines sensorial place-making through analysing the taste and other sensory experiences of forest Puer tea in its consumption among the urban middle class in mainland China. In the process of creating the ‘terroir’ of forest Puer tea, sensorial experience has been frequently linked to its place of origin. I argue that ethnic minorities who cultivate the tea play a vital part in the imagination of the tea's terroir. Trips by consumers to the mountains where the tea is cultivated, which aim at facilitating a ‘full experience’ of the tea and its culture, have generated a special pattern of interactions between the urban middle class who consume the tea and the ethnic minorities who cultivate it. The consumption of Puer tea, which brings about social imaginary and transcendent economic value, has become a driving force for producing the locality of ethnic minority areas.
This chapter explores the issue of food heritagization in Peru on the basis of the author’s recent research experiences. It tries to develop a diachronic approach on the emergence of the concept of « food heritage », to question the researchers’ status according to their motivations and interests vis-à-vis to those of heritage stakeholders, and to provide a critical consideration of their investment in the light of critical heritage studies. The analysis draws on the study of two projects of food heritagization which, by reason of their scope and aims, are strongly contrasted, or even opposed.
The article analyzes the so-called ‘New Nordic Kitchen’ and its award-winning Copenhagen-based restaurant, Noma. Despite the fact that the idea of the New Nordic Kitchen, where only ingredients found naturally in the Nordic territories can be used for cooking, has gained huge popularity among ordinary people and politicians alike, very limited critical research has been done on the phenomenon. This article investigates how the New Nordic Kitchen plays into constructions of race and whiteness. It shows how the New Nordic Kitchen celebrates an ideal of ‘the Nordic’ as ‘pure’, ‘wild’ and isolated from globalization and immigration. Furthermore, it argues that the image of Nordic food, displayed in the New Nordic Kitchen – including the idea of Nordic food as a messenger between a celebrated past and contemporary times – is rather exclusionary towards Nordic racial minorities, e.g. recently arrived immigrants and descendants. The article includes an analysis of Nordic race science from the turn of the twentieth century in order to illustrate how the New Nordic Kitchen draws upon a longer historical tradition of viewing the Nordic, and especially Nordic whiteness, as superior. The historical importance of race science in Denmark is not common knowledge, and very limited research is done in this area. The article therefore also brings new insights to the historical construction of whiteness in the Nordic context. Finally, the article also shows how the New Nordic Kitchen not only draws upon but also continues the colonial power relations between Denmark and former Danish colonies.
The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy.
Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.
Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.
This article discusses how the concept of banal nationalism can enable theories of national identity to be related to the lives of ordinary people. It links this concept to three key areas, the body, food and the landscape arguing that these are as much 'flags of identity' as are the more obvious symbols of national belonging: coins, costumes, anthems and ceremonies. It further states that these flags provide a system of reference within which aspects of the material world are used, consumed and experienced. It is, therefore, important to consider how this system operates so that a better understanding can be gained into how a sense of belonging and identity is communicated and maintained.
Discusses the relationship of food to identity formation, arguing that it combines 2 different dimensions, 1 of which runs from the biological to the cultural (i.e., the nutritional function to the symbolic function), while the other links the individual to the collective (i.e., the psychological to the social). Two aspects of the human relationship to food are stressed: the omnivorous nature of man and its multiple implications, and the process of incorporation and its associated representations. It is argued that omnivorousness implies a fundamental ambivalence and that "you are what you eat" not only organically, but in terms of beliefs and representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Expectations concerning the contribution of ordinary consumers to solving a broad array of societal problems have risen. This is particularly prevalent in issues such as environmental sustainability and food consumption, where ordinary food routines are being challenged through mediatised discourses on the environmental responsibilities of food consumers. In this article, in order to discuss the potential of ordinary food consumers in contributing to sustainability, we start from a theoretical stance and discuss how two different understandings of food consumption lead to different possibilities of "environmentalising" food consumption. Discussion is based on three Danish empirical qualitative research projects about food practices. We argue that it is difficult to judge which position offers more openings for sustainability: to consider environmentalised food consumption as part of broader food practices, or rather as a part of practices themselves? This is related to the interdependency of social actors and the dynamics of food.
Proust’s famous madeleine captures the power of food to evoke some of our deepest memories. Why does food hold such power? What does the growing commodification and globalization of food mean for our capacity to store the past in our meals – in the smell of olive oil or the taste of a fresh-cut fig? This book offers a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food and memory. Sutton challenges and expands anthropology’s current focus on issues of embodiment, memory and material culture, especially in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture across borders and boundaries. The Greek island of Kalymnos in the eastern Aegean, where Islanders claim to remember meals long past – both humble and spectacular – provides the main setting for these issues, as well as comparative materials drawn from England and the United States. Despite the growing interest in anthropological accounts of food and in the cultural construction of memory, the intersection of food with memory has not been accorded sustained examination. Cultural practices of feasting and fasting, global flows of food as both gifts and commodities, the rise of processed food and the relationship of orally transmitted recipes to the vast market in speciality cookbooks tie traditional anthropological mainstays such as ritual, exchange and death to more current concerns with structure and history, cognition and the ‘anthropology of the senses’. Arguing for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory, this book significantly advances our understanding of cultural processes and reformulates current theoretical preoccupations.
Food and drink have provided fascinating insights into cultural patterns in consumer societies. There is an intimate relationship between food and identity but processes of identity formation through food are far from clear. This book adds a new perspective to the existing body of scholarship by addressing pivotal questions: is food central or marginal to identity construction? Does food equally matter for all group(ing)s? Why would, in peoples experience, food become especially important at one moment, or, on the contrary, lose its significance?The origin of food habits is also interrogated. Contributors investigate how, when, why and by whom cooking, eating and drinking were used as a means of distinction. Leading historians and sociologists look at concepts of authenticity, adjustment, invention and import, as well as food signs and codes, and why they have been accepted or rejected. They examine a wide range of periods and topics: the elderly, alcohol and identity in Early Modern Europe; food riots and national identity; noble families, eating and drinking in eighteenth-century Spain; consumption and the working class in the nineteenth century; commensality; the meaning of Champagne in Belle-Epoque France; the narrative of food in Norway; wine and bread in French Algeria; food and identity in post-war Germany.This intriguing book brings together new, comparative insights and research that allow a better understanding of processes of integration and segregation, the role of food in the construction of identity, and the relationship between old and new food habits.
This paper reviews the current literature on political and ethical consumers, and relates it to the topic of sustainable food consumption. A first aim is to problematise a somewhat simplistic view of the political and ethical consumer found in the literature. The paper sheds light on some of the dilemmas that confront green political consumers. We indicate that most existing studies say very little about consumers’ thoughts, assumptions, and reflections about green consumerism in general, and about green consumerist tools, such as green labels, more specifically. Based on a literature review, we draw a picture of the typical concerned consumer as reflective, uncertain and ambivalent. This is connected to a second aim of the paper: to discuss a gap or mismatch between the production side and consumption side of green (food) labels. We conclude the paper by suggesting that green and ethical information schemes could become much more in line with the reflective nature of green, political consumers. We relate this discussion to concepts such as sub-politics and meta-politics.
Cet article étudie la façon dont les gens ordinaires parlent de la nourriture et en particulier dans quelle mesure, et comment, ces discussions incluent des arguments sur l’environnement et les produits bios. Contrairement à de nombreuses études qui démontrent la préoccupation du public concernant les aliments et leur production, l’étude rapportée ici montre que, dans un cadre exploratoire où des danois étaient invités à discuter d’alimentation et de production alimentaire, les arguments environnementaux jouent un rôle insignifiant. Ceci peut être expliqué d’une part par l’émergence d’un nouveau discours sociétal qui minimise l’importance des problèmes environnementaux et, d’autre part, comme l’effet d’une tendance actuelle où les individus sont de plus en plus préoccupés par leur bien-être personnel.
The article gives an overview of the recent upsurge of independent cinema in Southeast Asia. I argue that these films are examples of a new transnational cinema forthe lack of alternative: as the political and social situation in the countries where they have been made does not allow for their inclusion into the mainstream of the national cinema, they have turned to an international market to find an audience. I argue that a new generation of film-makers has been empowered by the easy and cheap access to digital video. Thanks to digital cinema technology, film-makersfrom South East Asia have the opportunity to produce their alternative and often very personal works. Using Arjun Appadurai's influential essay ‘Disjuncture and Difference’ (1996) as a theoretical framework, I discuss some of the specific traits of recent independent films from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Singapore and the Philippines, and point out their genuinely transnational nature with regard to distribution and reception.
Cookbooks, which usually belong to the humble literature of complex civilizations, tell unusual cultural tales. They combine the sturdy pragmatic virtues of all manuals with the vicarious pleasures of the literature of the senses. They reflect shifts in the boundaries of edibility, the proprieties of the culinary process, the logic of meals, the exigencies of the household budget, the vagaries of the market, and the structure of domestic ideologies. The existence of cookbooks presupposes not only some degree of literacy, but often an effort on the part of some variety of specialist to standardize the regime of the kitchen, to transmit culinary lore, and to publicize particular traditions guid- ing the journey of food from marketplace to kitchen to table. Insofar as cookbooks reflect the kind of technical and cultural elaboration we grace with the term cuisine, they are likely, as Jack Goody has recently argued, to be representations not only of structures of production and distribution and of social and cosmological schemes, but of class and hierarchy (1982). Their spread is an important sign of what Norbert Elias has called “the civilizing process” (1978). The increased interest of historians and anthropologists in cookbooks should therefore come as no surprise (Chang 1977; Cosman 1976; Khare 1976a, 1976b).
The article discusses the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan by examining a multitude of discourses on food produced by the national government as well as civil organisations working for food safety. Despite the intrinsically hybrid nature marked by the historical trajectory of Japanese food culture, these discourses tend to emphasise and propagate the Japanese element and, in so doing, firmly locate Japanese food as the core of ‘Japaneseness’. In this sense, contemporary food discourse in Japan functions as a powerful biopolitical device by propagating the notion of ‘delicious food in a beautiful country’ on which Japanese people are expected to organise their everyday lives.
The general semiotic properties of food take particularly intense forms in the context of gastro-politics – where food is the medium, and sometimes the message, of conflict. In South Asia, where beliefs about food encode a complex set of social and moral propositions, food serves two diametrically opposed semiotic functions: it can either homogenize the actors who transact in it, or it can serve to heterogenize them. In the Tamil Brahmin community of South India, this underlying tension takes three particular forms in the arenas of the household, the marriage feast, and the temple. [food, symbolism, semiotics, politics, South India]
Can consumers contribute to a more sustainable world? In this article we describe alternative consumption in Norway, exemplified by organic food, and discuss the role of consumers in promoting change. The paper is based on studies undertaken at the Norwegian National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO) during the last 15 years. The analysis starts by considering the origin of the organic movement in Norway and follows its development, showing that over the years consumption of organic products has reached a noteworthy position in the conventional market. While organic products seem to face conventionalisation, other alternative initiatives are emerging, such as fair trade, farmers’ market, farm food outlets, box schemes and community supported agriculture (CSA). Agreeing with the critique of a ‘generic active consumer model’, the article makes the case that the consumer’s role must be understood contextually and within its limitations. At the same time, the data presented in this article show that within shifting contextual frameworks, consumers utilise consumption with the goal of producing change. The paper suggests that forms of consumption defined as alternative are socially contested and the products that consumers identify as alternative are those that, in a given time and space, best reflect alternative values.
NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, Phaidon
- O Eliasson
Gastronomien I Danmark, Lindhardt og Ringhof
- B Christensen
The Scandinavian Kitchen, Kylie Cathie Limited
- C Plum
NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, Phaidon
- R Redzepi
(ed) (1992) Den Nordiske Verden I, Gyldendal
- K Hastrup
2001) Food, Identity and Drink: Eating and Drinking in Europe Since the Middle Ages
- P Scholliers
Danmarks og Norges Historie i Slutningen af det 16de Aarhundrede. I: Indre Historie; Femte Bog
- T F Troels-Lund
Imagined Communities, Verso
- B Anderson