Circuits of Authenticity

Food is an important marker of identity for any culture—its processing, preparation, and consumption being sites of multiple meanings. Levi-Strauss located food as a symbolic transition from Nature to Culture, with the process of cooking enabling this transition. The act of cooking has in itself acquired diacritical connotations of civilisation—distinguishing human from animal, civilised from barbarian, and more generally the Self from the Other (Levi-Strauss 1969). Goody (1982) and Khare (1976) demonstrate the various ways in which food becomes a powerful manifestation of ethnic identity, caste purity, gender difference, desire, abundance, and of the sanctity of domestic space.

However, as argued by Ferguson (2006), food can also be intrinsically individual, for its consumption is an individual act and its sensory experience and enjoyment is subject to varying individual tastes and demands. To become a mediator between the individual and society, food must be lifted from these material moorings and be placed in the realm of the symbolic. This requires two strategies—first, a formalisation of food, which involves a categorisation of acceptable and non-acceptable foods, “ideal” methods of preparation, and rules for social consumption of food (feasts, family gatherings, weddings, death rites, and so on). Second, it involves an intellectualisation and aestheticisation of food where it is associated with specific religious rituals, emotions, affects, and so on (Ferguson 2004).