The first time we encounter otherness, for many people, is through food. - Ronald Ranta
An interview on food, identity and nationalism with Ronald Ranta.
Ronald Ranta is a former chef really interested in the dynamics between food, identity and politics. Having a passion for politics, he decided in his mid-thirties to change long, holidays and night shifts as a chef to dive into politic research. Nowadays, Ronald is a senior lecturer in politics and international relations and author of books like Food, National Identity and Nationalism, From Everyday to Global Politics co-authored with Atsuko Ichijo.
How did a chef ended up doing research on food and nationalism?
I have always been interested in politics, I’ve always read a lot about politics. I started looking at different masters courses in the UK in politics and international relations. Most of the stuff they give out for reading material for students I read it for fun. I thought if I read this for fun, maybe that is the thing I should pursue.
Then I thought that my career resettled. Now, I am gonna be a political scientist or lecturer or researcher. But then, at the very beginning of my career, several of my colleagues said: you are writing about all this boring stuff, you’ve been a chef why don’t you write about food?
There are very few areas in life that all of us participate doing it. We all eat, most of us cook, most of us think about food, most of us go to restaurants, so food is a huge part of our identity, our history, our tradition. - Ronald Ranta
Even when I used to go to a social gathering and meeting with people for the first time, when people would ask me: what do you do? I would say: I am a chef. Oh, wow, amazing you are a chef, how interesting. Then when I became an academic writing about politics, people would say oh, oh boring, boring. People didn’t want to talk about these things in a social gathering.
So the encounter between food and politics came.
I never saw food as a discipline or area of research, but of course it is, there are many people that did this before me. Since then I have transitioned all my research only focused on food, food elements and the political elements.
How do you explain now in a social gathering, what are you doing.
Actually, what I find very interesting is that initially many people don’t understand what I do, but when I explain it they find it fascinating.
Food is one of the few things that lens our individual life with the wide world. - Ronald Ranta
There are very few areas in life that all of us participate doing it. We all eat, most of us cook, most of us think about food, most of us go to restaurants, so food is a huge part of our identity, our history, our tradition. Food is one of the few things that lens our individual life with the wide world.
What we eat says a lot about who we are. If we sit and look at what we eat, it tells us a lot about where we come from, who our parents are, often what our political beliefs are, religious beliefs, about gender, gender relations, about age.
There is so much you can understand simply through looking at what people eat or don’t wanna eat.
How is this relation between food and identity built.
Generally, I think that for the most people that grow in a stable family, very quickly they learn “this is our food, the food of our family” and “this is the food of other families or other people”.
The first time we encounter otherness, for many people, is through food. Oh, this is Chinese, this is Mexican, this is Indian. This is my food and this is the other one food.
I think people sense of identity changes all the time. But it seems like it is not. - Ronald Ranta
I think this is the first indication for many people early on that there are other people and other groups and they live differently. Particularly, I think if you are someone who comes from a very strong religious background. Where there are very clear rules and regulations about what you are allowed or not to eat, this is our food and the food we eat on these particular occasions or that we don’t but those other people eat.
How food otherness affects mixed people’s life and intercultural communities.
So I think, and now I am generalising, of course the food is very individual and context dependent. Generalising, you’d say that one of the ways of understanding integration – and integration is a very complex and controversial term, because some people say it is a two way process, it is not only the migrant that has to adopt and assimilate but also society has to adjust – but one of the ways of measuring integrations or understanding it is through food.
The first time we encounter otherness, for many people, is through food. - Ronald Ranta
Looking at how food practices are changed or adapted to new surroundings or how one can completely reject the new surroundings and only try to live and to eat the way they were accustomed in the previous location, or one can assimilate and join the new culture, or one can try to form the hybrid culture and create these hyphenated identities.
An example, Indian food in Britain is part of the British culture. In France for many people in the south is eating cous cous or kebab in Germany. Food demonstrates how society changes all the time.
If food changes all the time, how can it reflect a nation, a nation rooted to a place.
Well, I think people sense of identity changes all the time. But it seems like it is not. People believe very, very strongly they belong to somewhere, or to something, or to some groups.
However, if we look what that actually means, it changes. What it means to be Spanish, or British or Israeli, doesn’t remain the same. Particularly now, in a globalised world.
If you think about the cuisine of Europe, Middle East or Africa, they have changed dramatically. People think there is such a thing like Italian food, Mediterranean food, yes there is, right now, something we call, but a thousand years ago it was a very different thing.
For instance, in many parts of Europe, they would talk about the devil fruit, the tomato. They would not eat it, now we can not think of the mediterranean diet without thinking of tomatoes.
Assuming food shows our identity and our identity changes. How is then the sense of the nation built through food. Any example.
A very simple one. My son goes to school. In the school they want to celebrate diversity. So what they do, they ask parents and children to cook what they think of as their national dishes, take photos and put it on the board to show we have kids who come from all these different countries.
Now, in the era of globalisation people need to find strong markers of identity and also to express how amazing their food and their country is. - Ronald Ranta
What happens then, is that they have all these pictures of foods, with flags over them and the name of the country. So they start associating that some countries have certain foods.
Every country needs to have their own cuisine. Many European regions have very similar ideas about food. Now, in the era of globalisation people need to find strong markers of identity and also to express how amazing their food and their country is.
Most cookbooks, are based on regional food or national food. There are of course exceptions, but often if you look at them, you will find: this is a barbecue of the Unite States or this is a barbecue of Australia. I find it hard to move away from the nations.
I think it is also, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the perspective, that we live in a world which is raised over nation states. Some people have professed, few decades ago, because of globalisation the nationalism and the nations are ending.
Again, fortunately or unfortunately, nation states are still here and people still identify with the nation. It is everywhere, cooking books, newspapers, cooking programs. You think of Chef Table, one of those episodes is about how reinventing Italian cuisine, Brasilian cuisine, so food and nationalism is intertwined everywhere.
It might happen because the label of a nation seems to take you straight away to one place, to specific characteristics and traits.
There is a point here. I don’t say that this national food exists. Like, this is what people eat in every country. Of course, this is the issue of the imagined nation.
If you look at what people eat at every country, they eat many different things. Most people might not eat the national food most of the time. Actually, many times when you ask people what is the food they eat the most they will probably come up with pizza. So there is a dissonance between the way we live and the way we imagine our state or our nation.
What if we could really see what people eat everyday in their houses, would it be more reliable to be labelled as, for instance, Catalan food?
I mean what you might find is that many people in Catalonia eat similar things. Because of the weather, because of the climate, because of what is offered in the supermarkets. But whether what they eat will relate strongly to the essence of the Catalan identity?
That’s a big question and I am not sure. I mean, if I think of what most people I know eat for breakfast it will be porridge or cereal, now, no one else elevated porridge or cereal to a British national dish and many countries could claim it on their own.
Is there anything else you would like to add, Ronald.
There are very few topics that you can actually eat, celebrate, enjoy that gives you an incredible lens on society, tells you a lot about who people are but also what society is like, what are the trends, what is changing.
I think fortunately is it growing as a discipline and I would like to see in the future food schools, food departments because it is one of the few things that brings people together in so many levels. Anthropologists, sociologists, scientists, nutritionists, biologists, agronomists. It is something that helps linking people together. Food is fascinating.