Culinary Heritage
A Taste of Taiwan: How Taiwan’s Government is Constructing Its Culinary Heritage for an International Audience
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Martin Mandl
In recent years, East Asian governments have taken up a “taste-full” approach to international relations: Public Culinary Diplomacy. These cultural diplomacy programmes promote a country’s cuisine and culinary products to attract foreign visitors, foster agricultural exports and create a positive image abroad. Among East Asian Public Culinary Diplomacy programmes, the case of Taiwan is of particular interest since President Ma Ying-jeou declared taking Taiwan’s food to the world “a policy priority” in 2010. But, how is “Taiwanese food” constructed by the government for an international audience and potential recipients of such a food centred cultural diplomacy programme? Is Taiwan’s government constructing a competitive differentiator amidst the shared cultural and historical connections with the People’s Republic of China? In addition to revealing synergies between Taiwan’s food culture and its foreign relations, this paper identifies key frames used by official government outlets constructing the specific cultural dimension of food vis-à-vis the PRC. This paper adds a new contribution to the academic discussion of cultural diplomacy and the construction of cultural heritage for a non-domestic audience through the analysis of rhetorical processes shaping “Taiwanese food.” This contribution, thus, is relevant because both the use of food in cultural diplomacy and the construction of cultural heritage for a non-domestic audience are yet to be fully understood through academic research.
Eating in the Anthropocene: Future Climate Migration and Food in Cinema
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Johan Hoglund
Anthropogenic climate change, causing rising sea levels and droughts, has already provoked migration within and across nations, and this process will increase in the years to come (Rigaud 2018). Climate migration is triggered by a lack of food, but it also produces the diasporic food traditions, and, as described in EAT (2019), a need for more sustainable ways of eating. Although studies have examined the effect of previous climate migration (McLeman 2006), it is difficult to predict how the migration of food traditions, and new types of food and eating will impact human social organisation and behaviour. Literature and film can contribute usefully to this discussion by imagining human societies that have been forced to adapt to these pressures. Building on Ghosh’s (2016) observation that realist fiction struggles to depict future climate change, this paper explores how speculative fiction film imagines food and eating in diasporic, migrant futures. The paper specifically considers Snowpiercer (2013) and Mortal Engines (2018) that portray distant futures of constant migration where new forms of eating have developed. The dystopian techno-futures that these films visualise enable them to confront audiences with radical shifts in the way that food is manufactured, ritualized and consumed.
Culinary Constructions: Food, Otherness and National Identity in French and French-language Cinemas
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vanessa Lee
This paper is proposed as part of a panel on food and migration in cinema. This paper analyses how national identity and Othering are constructed through representations of food in French and French-language films. I focus on the French context, for if there have been a number of studies of films depicting the experiences of migrant communities in France and the confrontations between migrant communities and the "host" French communities (Sherzer, 1996; Dubois, 2016; Higbee, 2013; Berghahn, 2013; Asava, 2017), few delve into the representations of food and culinary practices in much detail. The questions raised in this paper may however be applied to other national contexts. To demonstrate how images and discourses related to cooking and eating are employed to convey specific representations of national identity and foreignness, I analyse four films made in the first decades of the twenty-first century (The Secret of the Grain, 2007, Abdellatif Kechiche; Cuire ensemble, 2014, François Pirotte and Foued Bellali; Serial (Bad) Weddings, 2014, Philippe de Chauveron; Tazzeka, 2017, Jean-Philippe Gaud). In these films food comes across as a marker of difference and/or sameness, and as a key element in the construction of national identity. The paper also investigates how these questions of food and national identity are further problematised by factors such as the migrant crisis in Europe and the existence of "postmigratory" generations (Kleppinger and Reeck, 2018) in France who consider themselves French as well as possessing multiple cultural identities.
