Abstract
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.
This paper shows how the rhetoric of food can be used as a tool in the construction of European identities. Meals, shopping, cooking, manufacture and marketing are used as a mean to achieve the goal of a distinctive European character – particularly through the encouragement of culinary diversity. By talking of identities in the plural, I want to demonstrate that, parallel to the intention of strengthening a pan-European community, food can be used to highlight many contrastive identities. The labelling of food with texts and pictures offers a symbolic field that is redolent with meaning, where questions of distinction and categorization, belonging and anchorage in a changeable world are both raised and answered.
Publisher Notes
- This article was previously published by Museum Tusculanum Press.