Food is a powerful cultural signifier 2
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READ PART 12. Ethnic foods in the global village
Like ethnicity itself, Cultural cuisine only becomes self-conscious—the abstract reality when cultural boundaries crossed.
Ethnic foods called into being in their encounter with the foodways of the other. They defined by difference. They only become recognized as after Being 'disembedded '10 from their locality and re-embedded to a new context Where difference makes them visible. Under globalization conditions, the high permeability of national borders has facilitated and accelerated the Dissemination of individuals, cultures, and foods. As people move, they take with Them their ethnic background and the signifiers that qualify it. Ethnicity does not Exist and of itself. Ethnicity does not exist outside culture -- it is constructed by It and featured inside.
It is Also, a complicated procedure that I seek to research by examining and assessing some of The Probable causes are underpinning the different cultural representations of cultural foods in Australia and Italy. The Australian Case Chicken cacciatore on a Sunday, ravioli on a Monday, noodle Fish cakes on a Tuesday, Mongolian stir fry on a Wednesday. What does this say about the Australian palate?
This is how the Australian food writer Cherry Ripe described the diverse nature Ripe concludes '... we have become some Of the most eclectic eaters in the world.' Ethnic Diversity in Australian foodways Is perceived as a positive aspect of its cuisine and a cultural signifier. Still, ethnic food has also become associated with a specific cohort of people inhabiting the urban and Rich spaces of cosmopolitanism. For them, food has become a signifier Which they can freely appropriate as 'cultural capital 'and that they willingly Incorporate into their processes of cultural identification.
Ethnic food in huge cities has become a signifier of 'culinary, cultural capital.
Expanding on Bourdieu's concept, David Bell used 'culinary, cultural capital' to Describe the purchase of culinary expertise that confers distinction. Taste and Additional Bell asserted that urban Diversity in ethnic restaurants and foods provides these individuals with considerable Consumption choice, which enhances their status and social-cultural differentiation when dining out. Exploring the area of research, Warded et al. argues that.
That this cohort of urban audiences has become proficient practitioners in 'cultural Ominousness.' They developed precise skills for picking, mixing, and matching the Cultural Diversity to suit their particular purposes. As Warded et al. reasoned 'the pursuit of a variety of customer experience is a feature of particular social Group (to) express social differentiation.' Thus, Ripe portrayal of Australian culinary Diversity is a perfect example of 'cultural ominousness.'
Ethnic foods fulfill different purposes for different people. Whereas for the Urban audiences, cultural foods represent culinary, cultural capital, for the ethnic-self, It is a means of life. When marked by the difference of, food becomes cultural traversed boundaries. This aspect reinforces feelings of Solidarity with the ethnic-same, perpetuating the familiarity and comforts of what, for all these reasons, diet accelerates meaning. It strengthens bonds that are social and cultural ties, asserting Shared cultural origins, which are enacted in the community. Food is a tool for cultural survival.
The following analysis of the Italian case study expands further on the subject. It Assesses Italian foodways, once the food of diaspora. It evaluates how this facet Of Italian cuisine might have affected the decisions made by the officials in Lucca, which marginalized the menus of this ethnic-others. The Italian Case Lucca's center-right city council recently stirred much Contention and accusations of racism by prohibiting new ethnic Food restaurants from opening within its stunning historical center.
According to Donation's article, ethnic food was considered as a malaise that Destabilized the notion of Italian cuisine, its culinary roots, and essential customs. Acting as a cultural gatekeeper, Lucca's city council perpetuated the cultural continuity and permanency. Not surprisingly, any occasion Supposed certainties generated anxieties and ambiguity. Yet as the following, The analysis illustrates, Italian culinary traditions and alleged cultural innocence are but a Story aiming at describing nostalgic and imagined representations of integrated and unified foodways. Moreover, despite the city of Lucca's animosity towards Cultural foods, a procedure for culinary integration is simultaneously taking place in Italy.
The 2012 BBC series Two Greedy Italians hosted by the celebrity chefs Antonio Carlucci and Gennaro Contador are a case in point. In this TV series, Carlucci and Contador visited a vegetable farm owned by an Asian female farmer. It showed a range of 'exotic' vegetables -- book-choy and other Asian greens -- cultivated alongside familiar Italian vegetables -- tomatoes and eggplants. On The same app, Carlucci and Contador interviewed a marketplace tour-guide whose function was to take customers on tours to present them to the vast array of products from the market stalls, most of them unknown or unfamiliar to Italian customers and Italian cooking.
Finally, Carlucci and Contador visited a Neighborhood restaurant that specialized in Fusion Food. The female chef cooked for The dish included shitake mushrooms, ginger, Hesitantly, Contador, and Carlucci ate it. Despite Acknowledging that they had enjoyed its tastes, sarcastically, they commented: 'it's ok, but don't call it risotto; call it falsetto' (fusion risotto). 24 On the one hand, they exemplify in the hostility Some sectors of the Italian people towards some of the effects of globalization and Europeanisation, in particular, the presence of ethnic others and their foods in Italian towns. On the other hand, these examples also demonstrate the
Integration and introduction of new products and practices into contemporary Italian foodways are (and have always been) taking place. These cases also highlight the irony within narratives of culinary Italian-ness. Constructed as pristine, unified, and rooted in time and practice, these narratives do not consider that many of the products currently recognized as Italian (tomato and eggplant) aren't native ingredients and were introduced to The Italian foodways by other people.
Moreover, these narratives rarely acknowledge that Italian food in the Western world owes its popularity to the omnipresence of Italian diaspora in Europe, the USA, and Australia. These examples further underscore the inevitability of cultural syncretism. Unlike the essentialist/conservative discourse, Diversity is inescapable and enriching. What would cuisine be, eggplants, or without tomatoes? The thought of pure cultural forms is but an illusion.
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