When it takes place within conservative cultural frameworks and political propaganda, the rediscovery of food traditions can bolster moral values and patriarchal social structures based on the ideological myth of a time that knew neither disruptions nor crises – maybe because it never existed.
Barcelona has some great markets. Besides the very well-known but also quite touristy Boqueria, neighborhood markets are well integrated in the city, providing fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, and fish. Hiberico hams, chorizos, and cheese are also available, both of the artisanal and the industrial kinds. Shopping around, the old is mixed with the new, the products of the Mediterranean are sold side by side with goods coming from all over the world. In this landscape, what is the role of food traditions? What do they mean in terms of culture and politics? These are some of the topics we are exploring at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in the framework of my Fulbright Specialist grant. Barcelona and Catalonia are particularly interesting, as they have acquired notoriety as places for experimentation and innovation, starting about two decades ago with Ferran Adrià’s work at el Bulli, where he introduced new ways to integrate creative processes in the kitchen.
At a time when global politics are dominated by populist and sovranist movements that vehemently embrace the refusal of immigration, globalization, and anything that may be identified as elitist, food tradition inevitably enters the fray. The discussions become at times quite animated, as eating is an everyday activity that touches consumers both as individuals and as members of communities. For those who feel their daily life is threatened by mechanisms that are difficult to understand and on which they have little control, the past becomes something to prize and safeguard as a source of pride and an anchor for the reproduction of cultural identity. In this context, a multiplicity of actors generates new shared connotations about the past that are meant to shape the features of their present-day material culture.
Dried peppers in the Boqueria, Barcelona
Traditions acquire further meaning and emotional weight when current customs are projected back onto the past and are attributed a long history that they may not actually have. A few years ago, activists of the then secessionist Lega North party in Italy (now just called Lega and part of the current government coalition) cooked and distributed polenta on the streets, while circulating posters that stated: “Yes to polenta, no to couscous.” The not-so-subtle message was that polenta was worth embracing as an expression of local culture, while couscous was a manifestation of foreign customs. The fact that couscous has been present in Italy since the colonization of Sicily by Muslim kingdoms in the 9th century, well before the arrival of maize from the New World in the 16th century, was apparently of no consequence in terms of the emotional impact of the message.
In the past few days, Poland has seen the development of a debate about the intention of the current government to mark bison and beaver as edible meats, causing the reaction of animalists and the more liberal sectors of society, mostly identified with the opposition. Immediately discussions developed to ascertain if those animals were historically part of Polish culinary traditions – a theme that is closely connected with the role of hunting in contemporary society. Food-related traditions can actually turn into violent confrontations, as in the case of beef consumption in India, which although avoided by Hindus is part of Christian and Muslim culinary customs. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been brandishing the contentious issue as a banner to gather consensus for their identity politics and to foment intolerance among its supporters. These political expressions point to the possibility that the rediscovery of food traditions can bolster cultural discourses and political propaganda that hinge on conservative moral values and patriarchal social structures, based on the ideological myth of a time that knew neither disruptions nor crises – maybe because it never existed.
These forms of attachment to food traditions are quite different from the global expressions of cosmopolitanism that emphasize local and traditional foods—which obviously vary according to locations and geographical areas—as a form of educated and class-inflected resistance to mass-production and homogenization. The growing consumer segment of “foodies” and food enthusiasts, often with high spending power, has been developing specialized language, categories of taste, as well as an ambivalent disdain for local and traditional foods when they are produced, prepared, and consumed according to older paradigms that carry connotations of ignorance and backwardness. This renewed interest in “elevated,” high-quality, value-added traditional foods often presents itself a reflection of larger trends in the globalist, high-end food scene that tends to critique the use of gastronomy as a tool to advance populist, if not nationalist, agendas. Traditions are instead embraced as an expression of diversity and multiculturality that are considered as an enrichment for a country’s foodscape.
Tomatoes in Barcelona
These examples suggest that food resists symbolic universalities and historical certainties, but precisely because of that it can be easily absorbed into divergent political projects. Food traditions become a focal point that condenses networks of heterogeneous elements – practices, objects, attitudes, which are attributed very diverse meanings deriving from distinct contexts and stakeholders. Traditions constitute a form of temporality in which social actors create connections between their perceptions of the past, their experiences in the present, and their expectations for the future.
Through these expressions of historical consciousness, individuals and communities articulate their social identity not only by locating themselves in time but also by judging time (as good or bad, crisis or hope, as real or false tradition). It is important to underline that such temporalities transcend individual experiences to constitute socially constructed discourses of time. Some histories (and stories) are privileged over others, generating an economy of the past, in which fragments from previous periods are circulated, exchanged, and valued in the present to shape the future.
When trying to make sense of such debates, it is strategic to determine who claims the authority to determine what is traditional and what is not. Is it a distributed process or are there nodes of power that can guide or at least influence the negotiations around the topic? What are the cultural, economic, social, and political dynamics behind the activation of tradition as a relevant category in evaluating food? Food is far from neutral: it becomes an arena in which our aspirations about what society should be are activated, reaching our bodies and our most intimate experiences.
I will continue sharing reflections from our work in Barcelona on the blog.