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Thema: De geografe van voedsel

oikos juli 2009

Geography, Food and Sushi

Professor Peter Atkinsere as never een a greater eve

of interest in the geography of foodthan at present. Although food re-presents a declining part of the mo-netary value of our household budgetsin t e Net er an s an ot er westerncountries, we are nevertheless giv-ing it greater attention for reasonsof health, cultural signicance and

pure enjoyment. T ere is en essscope here for the geographer andI will take the opportunity of thisshort article to touch on four of theareas t at I am present y researc -ing. I wi t en eve op one o t em.

The rst is the topic of food safety.This has become one of our principalconcerns in t e ast 25 years, witworries about infectious diseasessuch as mad cow disease, or badingredients such as butterfat in milkor articial additives. Most recently itis t e un nown e ects o genetica ymodied foods that have been exer-cising consumers across Europe. Myown contribution has been to showt at unsa e oo s ave een wit us

for a very long time on a large scalecertainly back to the beginning of thenineteenth century (Atkins 2008).

Secon , t ere as een a materiaturn in human geography recently,and in food geography we are in-creasingly taking seriously the stuffin foodstuffs. My studies of water andmilk, for instance, have yielded the

insight that quality is exceptionallydifcult to dene and to regulate gi-ven the chemical variations of natural

commodities. We therefore need toinvent new methods of geographi-ca ana ysis in or er to un erstan

where nature and society meet andoverlap, such as legal geographiesof responsibility (Atkins 2007;At ins, Hassan an Dunn 2007 .

My third interest is obesity. This isdifferent from the rst topic becausehere the problem is not so much

what is in the food as in how muchwe eat. It seems to me t at t ere isan opportunity here for geographersbecause maps of body mass index or

overweight at any scale show sign-icant spatial variations that so farave not een exp aine satis acto-

rily. I have just nished writing a bookthat suggests that there is a stronghistorical dynamic in geographicaltren s in o es- ity t at po icymakers have largely ignored(Oddy, Atkins and Amilien 2009).

Fourt , I ave written a out t ecu tura geograp ies o oo At insand Bowler 2001, chapters 19-23).

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9ing literature on food and identity,

spaces of consumption, and the socialconstructions of food biographies.One intriguing aspect has been theglobalization of cuisines, which, al-

though having its roots in the imperialadventures of the nineteenth century,as recent y s i te a gear wit t e

global expansion of restaurant chainssuch as McDonalds and the spreadof ethnic restaurants in the wake ofworldwide migration. The former hasgenerate a convergence o coo ingstyles known as McDonaldization, and

the latter has introduced metropoli-tan populations in wealthy countriesto a previous y unimagine variety odishes. Anneke van Otterloo (2007)has written about the foodscapeof Amsterdam and shows how itscosmopo itanism as evo ve over50 years. At rst it was a matter oDutch people experimenting with thefoods of immigrants but now half of

the citys inhabitants are of foreignorigin, so t at a e ements o t efood industry have to cater for whatused to be minority, exotic raw ma-terials, processed foods, and cookedis es. Van Otter oo argues t at t e

Dutc at one time or anot er aveembraced all four positions of Wardesmodel of the diffusion of foreign andexotic foods: rejection, indigeniza-

tion, resty ing, an aut entication.

I was recently reading a market re-search report on the foods people eatin the different regions of Britain. Asyou now, in t e UK we on t avethe variety of typical foods that theyhave in Italy and France, where thereare hundreds of local cheeses andwines, many met o s o preparingmeat, and a mouth-watering array oftraditional recipes that have specicplace connections. But there are re-

gional variations in consumer prefer-ence in the UK. Why is it, for instance,that the North East of England is leastintereste in experimenting wit ex-otic cuisines? London is a miniatureversion of the worlds kitchens, with

ethnic restaurants from more than ahundred countries. But the citizenso Newcast e, Dur am an Sun er-land are less likely to have trieda Chinese, Indian, Thai, TexMexmeal in the last twelve monthst an peop e in any ot er region.

Over time the UK generally has been

remarkably receptive to exotic cui-sines. The connexion with the formerEmpire is o vious, particu ar y retur-ning colonial ofcials bringing recipesback with them, and since the 1950simmigrant groups have importedtheir own food cultures. The sourc-ing o raw materia s rom a overthe world has meant the de factoglobalization of the British diet over

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Thema: De geografe van voedsel

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other country. There is even Britishidentity here, for instance the cupof tea, which was of course rst ofChinese and then of Indian origin.

We imagine and re-imagine theworld through culinary globalization.We are genuine y intereste in t eplace associations of origin, but us-ually settle for a kind of performanceor theatre of stereotypes when weenter a restaurant. The food we areo ere may ear on y a passing re-semblance to authentic dishes, rstly

because mass catering demands asimplification of ingredients andcoo ing met o s, an secon y e-cause recipes and menus are alwaysadjusted to suit local taste. A thirdcomplication is that Britains 9,000In ian restaurants are most y runy entrepreneurs rom t e Sy et

district of Bangladesh. They em-ploy 70,000 cooks and waiters and

their annual turnover is 3.8 billion.T is ascinating stream o migrationhas offered opportunities to manypeople from that region and theremittances from wages and protsave a an impact on its economy.

Returne migrants t ere are ca eLondoni and they live in style.

The recent popularity of Japanese

oo is urt er evi ence o g o ataste. In crossing cultural bounda-ries old meanings are lost and newones created. The end product is ahybrid. Many of us like sushi, which isrice resse wit vinegar an servewith raw sh, often rolled inside aseaweed skin. But the sushi sold insupermarkets and sushi restaurantswou pro a y not appea to Japan-ese food purists. The same is true ofnoodle restaurants and teppanyaki(griddled beef) restaurants. But does

it matter? The search for authentic-ity is fun but ultimately fruitless be-cause experiencing the other is al-ways inuenced by ones own percep-tions, skills and understandings. Do Imind that chicken tikka masala was

invented in Glasgow and balti in Bir-mingham? Denitely not. I celebratei erence, variety, usion an inno-

vation. Isnt that an important partof what human geography is about?

So, the geography of food has manyguises. My own view is t at t is is oneof the most exciting branches of con-

temporary human geography and onethat is worthy of research at both un-ergra uate an postgra uate eve .

P.J.Atkins@durham.ac.uk

ReferencesAt ins, P.J. 2007 La oratories,

laws and the career of a com-modity, Environment & Planning

D: Society & Space 25, 967-89At ins, P. J. 2008 Fear o

animal foods: a century ofzoonotics, Appetite 51, 18-21Atkins, P.J. and Bowler, I.R. (2001)

Foo in society: economy, cu ture,geograp y Lon on: Ho er ArnoAtkins, P.J., Hassan, M.M. and

Dunn, C.E. (2006) Toxic torts: ar-senic poisoning in Bangladesh and

t e ega geograp ies o responsi-bility, Transactions of the Instituteof British Geographers 31, 272-85Oddy, D.J., Atkins, P.J. and Amil-

ien, V. (Eds)(2009) The rise ofo esity in Europe: a twentiet cen-tury food history Aldershot: AshgateVan Otterloo, A. (2007) The changingposition of exotic foods in post-warAmster am, pp 177-88 in At ins,P.J., Lummel, P. and Oddy, D.J.(Eds) Food and the city in Europesince 1800 Aldershot: Ashgate