Tasting the Nation: Food, Identity, and Belonging in Canada

Author(s):  
Helin Burkay ◽  
David Dean
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Garner ◽  
Cesar Ayala

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine farmers’ market consumer behavior through a regional food and culinary tourism lens to see the ways these festive and atmospheric markets can be used to develop a regional brand or identity surrounding food production. Design/methodology/approach This study was based on a survey of 270 participants in a farmers’ market in the USA. A combination of descriptive and statistical analyses was used to analyze consumer habits and spending. Findings The findings in this study suggest that while most of the customers live in a town where the market is located, a significant number of customers come from other locations, with some traveling significant distances, to participate in this market, particularly for the Saturday market. Many of the customers come to purchase organic and local foods. Research limitations/implications This work is limited, in that it is a case study at one farmers’ market in the USA, and the work is exploratory in nature. Practical implications This work has implications for market managers seeking to increase their consumer base. Markets that want to increase their reach would do well to promote their events to a wider geographic area. The results presented here showed that consumers are willing to drive upward of 40 miles to attend a high-quality market. Originality/value This work expands our conceptualization of farmers’ markets by suggesting that these markets have the potential to form the backbone of a region is food identity through the creation of a food destination.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Alessandra Campanari ◽  
Alessio Cavicchi

With the emergence of culinary multiculturalism in the globalized world, ethnic restaurants have become central symbols of postmodern life, no longer relegated to a domestic and community sphere, but able to attract non-ethnic customers without necessarily destroy food cultural heritage. In line with this trend, the article aims to contribute to the literature on new food tourism experiences by examining contemporary Italian restaurants in the US to investigate how Italian food identity in ethnic restaurants is advertised and sold. Starting from the literature on Italian culinary immigration in America, from the rise of the first Italian restaurants to the invention of the Italian American culinary tradition, the article provides an ethnographic study to understand the changing business environment that is leading new entrepreneurs in foodservice to diversify their business models towards the creation of new food tourism experiences as a result of an ever-changing dialogue between tradition and innovation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-10
Author(s):  
Selma Tozanli

The authors base their research on observations and in the literature concerning different forms of mobility of human beings and food products, distances and territorial anchoring. They continue by addressing the paradoxes in acculturation processes that occur during identity (re)construction in food consumption and eating habits. They focus on the role of cross-border migration, in the spreading of genuine country-specific products and/or local food specialties of migrant populations in their host countries. What are the different definitions of the distance/s between the migrant and his home country and the host culture? What role does the migrant play in the spreading of these eating habits? How does the acculturation process work? What different forms of territorial anchoring account the spreading of these genuine country-specific foods?


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Carla Rey Vasquez

<p>Through an ethnographic investigation of school lunchboxes, this thesis explores if and how difference and Otherness is understood by children. In three urban New Zealand primary schools I examine how children construct, affirm and/or challenge social inequalities and issues of inclusion by looking at the contents, concepts, narratives and activities related to the consumption and sharing of their lunch food. Literature dedicated to social class (Bourdieu, 1984) and identity (Rikoon, 1982; Stern, 1977) has documented the way in which food is creatively used to reaffirm unity and belonging within minority groups (Camp, 1979; Abrahams & Kalcik, 1978). In contrast to this approach, I review the role of food as a ‘safe space’ (Mercon, 2008: 5) where diversity may be allowed to symbolically exist for the purpose of affirming the unity of the nation state, while ultimately muffling deeper social differences. The thesis thus questions the assumption that food, identity and social cohesion are conceptually linked. My overall argument centres on the “humble” sandwich, which I claim is constructed as the core, dominant component of the lunchbox, mutually constituting nutritional, social class and ethnic tropes, practices and values. I assess the discourses, behaviours and symbolism that historically situates the sandwich as iconicaly or emblematically “Kiwi”, contending that via the creation of a dychotomized system (i.e. healthy, good, skinny, well-behaved, energetic, Kiwi versus junk-food, bad, fat, naughty, sick, Other) children are enculturated into the logics of work and socialized to be compliant with structures of inequality. Thus, while the sandwich appears equally accessible to all, the differences in its production can result in practices of class based distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) and ethnic exclusion (Hage, 2003). However, my analysis also reveals that children are not mere subjects of structure, but that they reproduce, challenge, mediate, and re-shape these discourses and behaviours.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Carla Rey Vasquez

<p>Through an ethnographic investigation of school lunchboxes, this thesis explores if and how difference and Otherness is understood by children. In three urban New Zealand primary schools I examine how children construct, affirm and/or challenge social inequalities and issues of inclusion by looking at the contents, concepts, narratives and activities related to the consumption and sharing of their lunch food. Literature dedicated to social class (Bourdieu, 1984) and identity (Rikoon, 1982; Stern, 1977) has documented the way in which food is creatively used to reaffirm unity and belonging within minority groups (Camp, 1979; Abrahams & Kalcik, 1978). In contrast to this approach, I review the role of food as a ‘safe space’ (Mercon, 2008: 5) where diversity may be allowed to symbolically exist for the purpose of affirming the unity of the nation state, while ultimately muffling deeper social differences. The thesis thus questions the assumption that food, identity and social cohesion are conceptually linked. My overall argument centres on the “humble” sandwich, which I claim is constructed as the core, dominant component of the lunchbox, mutually constituting nutritional, social class and ethnic tropes, practices and values. I assess the discourses, behaviours and symbolism that historically situates the sandwich as iconicaly or emblematically “Kiwi”, contending that via the creation of a dychotomized system (i.e. healthy, good, skinny, well-behaved, energetic, Kiwi versus junk-food, bad, fat, naughty, sick, Other) children are enculturated into the logics of work and socialized to be compliant with structures of inequality. Thus, while the sandwich appears equally accessible to all, the differences in its production can result in practices of class based distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) and ethnic exclusion (Hage, 2003). However, my analysis also reveals that children are not mere subjects of structure, but that they reproduce, challenge, mediate, and re-shape these discourses and behaviours.</p>


10.1068/d52j ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Duruz

In this paper I examine intersections of food, identity, and place within the imagined ‘regions’ of everyday practices, stories, and memories. As such, I continue traditions of writing in cultural geography exemplified by David Bell and Gill Valentine's [1997 Consuming Geographies (Routledge, London)] focus on connecting cultures of food and place, Jon May's (1996a, “‘A little taste of something more exotic’” Geography81 57–64; 1996b, “Globalization and the politics of place” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series21 194–215) nuanced explorations of ‘exotic’ eating in North London, and by Ian Cook, Phil Crang, and Mark Thorpe's [1999, “Eating into Britishness”, in Practising Identities Eds S Roseneil, J Seymour (Macmillan, London) pp 223–248] reflections on British culinary imaginaries and their ‘multicultural’ inscriptions. Specifically, this paper is concerned with ways that conceptions of ethnicity delineate and divide everyday spaces: how meanings of Britishness and Australianness, based in the primacy of ‘tradition’, ‘the West’, and Anglo-Celtic belongings, permeate everyday life in London and Sydney and shape their food cultures. The paper traces moments in the culinary biographies of two women, one English and one Australian of British descent, living in London and Sydney, respectively, and close to shopping streets known for the diversity of their ‘ethnic’ communities. The women's narratives are instructive in their continuities, as much as in their disjunctions. The argument follows some of these, including unexpected engagements with ‘Asia’ and ‘Europe’ and ‘cosmopolitan identity’. Resonances from these engagements contribute to a more complex and ambivalent sense of belonging than first supposed. This is still the region of ‘mainstream’, ‘Anglo’-identity, yet it is one marked by constant spatial redefinition and by occasional porosity of boundary.


2022 ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Femi Emmanuel Oni ◽  
Lloyd Baiyegunhi

Food is more than nutrition; it has veritable socio-cultural meanings, and it encapsulates all manner of associations. This chapter reviews several experiences of migrants that are relevant, using different approaches, creating a link between food, identity, and memory of migrants as well as looking at the sequential movement of food and its interactions by reviewing extant literatures in the global and African contexts. Migration and migrants are evident across the borders of countries around the universe. It was revealed that migrants are encumbered with different experiences-accepting and repelling in the course of migration, as it is glaring that there is a conglomerate between food, memory, and identity.


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