Glocal and food: On alimentary translation

Franciscu Sedda

doi:10.1515/sem-2016-0099

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Glocal and food: On alimentary translation

Franciscu Sedda

Published/Copyright: May 14, 2016

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From the journal Semiotica Volume 2016 Issue 211

Abstract

The essay investigates the relation between glocal and food. As it engages the task, it touches upon three principal domains: (I) the first is the intimate and constitutive relation between the idea of farming and the rise of the term glocal; (II) the second, and more substantial domain concerns the exploration of the device of appropriation within the European semiosphere of the foods originating in the Americas – such as the tomato, the potato, turkey, chocolate, coffee; (III) the third domain engages the semiopolitical tensions centering around the symbolic dish of Sardinian cuisine, su porceddu (suckling pig), before and within the European context. More broadly, the essay draws a comparison between the unperceived glocality of past food exchanges and hybridizations with aspects of alimentary contemporaneity. By means of this comparison the essay will show how today’s explicit recognition of gastronomical-cultural diversity produces paradoxical effects of limitation of alimentary translatability. At the same time, the comparison underlines how and why contemporary food consumption can be described as a glocal production of the authentic.

Keywords: glocalization/globalization; food translation; Columbian exchange; slow food; ethnic restaurants; semiopolitics

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Martino Dibeltulo, Giovanni Pilloni, and Simona Stano for providing me with their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the essay.

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Published Online: 2016-5-14

Published in Print: 2016-7-1

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https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2016-0099

Keywords for this article

glocalization/globalization; food translation; Columbian exchange; slow food; ethnic restaurants; semiopolitics