Eating Difference

TLDR

Culinary tourism is defined as exploratory eating that treats unfamiliar foods as encounters with Otherness, using food as a material symbol of the global to perform cosmopolitanism while simultaneously transgressing and reinforcing travelers’ own cultural norms. The study analyzes travelers’ web-based narratives and interviews to explore how food, bodily experience, and the notion of the global interrelate, arguing that travelers consume both the differences between their own White, Western culture and other cultures and the differences among various Others.

Abstract

This article examines the intersecting mobilities that are involved in culinary tourism. The term culinary tourism refers to practices of exploratory eating, especially in which unfamiliar foods are seen as an encounter with Otherness. Through an analysis of the travel narratives recounted by travelers in their Web sites and interviews, the article speculates on the material relations among food, travelers' bodies, and consumption of “the global.” In “eating the Other” while on the move, these travelers are consuming not only the differences between their own White, Western culture and other cultures but also the differences among various Others. Culinary tourism is not necessarily about knowing or experiencing another culture but about performing a sense of adventure, adaptability, and openness to any other culture. Food and eating are mobilized as material symbols of the global in travelers' performances of cosmopolitanism through which travelers simultaneously transgress and reinforce their own culture's norms.