Constructing Cuisine

Sorry I have been so quiet on this page. On the food front, I have only been thinking about one thing recently: my dissertation. I wrote a short article recently outlining my study, which I share here. Forget picnics, beaches and BBQs, this is what I'll be doing this summer...

The aim of my study is to investigate the context(s) in which having a national cuisine becomes significant. I will be looking at when, why and for whom it becomes important to talk about a national cuisine in Britain and Australia.

Like most aspects of culture that are the focus of anthropological studies, cuisines are never static, but constantly being made and remade. Nevertheless, it seems that at a particular moment, or moments, having a national cuisine becomes an important part of the ‘cultural capital’ of a nation. My research so far suggests that in Australia and Britain this becomes especially important in the 1980s and gains momentum in the 1990s. This is not to suggest that either country is lacking a rich culinary history, but rather that “the globally held view that every nation must have its own cuisine” (Cusack, 2000: 208) is actually quite a recent phenomenon.

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Food and identity: other factors

When I first started reading about food and identity I used to gloss over the parts which highlighted the role played by factors such as globalisation and commercialisation. I wasn’t interested in this. I liked reading about the sentimental stuff. But the more I have read, the harder it has been to ignore and now that I am going to be writing my dissertation on the subject I can’t afford to overlook it.

Funnily enough, when I was writing about my own food memories in my last post I started writing about my childhood obsession with English junk food and realised that, subconsciously, I had been influenced by these other factors. I loved stocking up on English junk food on childhood visits to the UK from Australia. I was keen on the ‘Olde' English hard-boiled sweets that you couldn’t get in Oz, but I was also interested in the different brands and flavours of crisps and sweets available. I thought it novel that the colours of crisp packets indicated different flavours in the UK. When I was back in Australia last Christmas, I found some old journals from my trips to England. I had actually stuck the empty crisp and chocolate wrappers in them, along with ticket stubs, postcards and other ‘memories’.

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