Thema: De geografie van voedsel

Geography, Food and Sushi

Professor Peter Atkins There has never been a greater level of interest in the geography of food than at present. Although food represents a declining part of the monetary value of our household budgets in the Netherlands and other western countries, we are nevertheless giving it greater attention for reasons of health, cultural significance and pure enjoyment. There is endless scope here for the geographer and I will take the opportunity of this short article to touch on four of the areas that I am presently researching. I will then develop one of them. The first is the topic of food safety. This has become one of our principal concerns in the last 25 years, with worries about infectious diseases such as mad cow disease, or bad ingredients such as butterfat in milk or artificial additives. Most recently it is the unknown effects of genetically modified foods that have been exercising consumers across Europe. My own contribution has been to show that unsafe foods have been with us for a very long time on a large scale certainly back to the beginning of the nineteenth century (Atkins 2008). Second, there has been a material turn in human geography recently, and in food geography we are increasingly taking seriously the stuff in foodstuffs. My studies of water and milk, for instance, have yielded the insight that quality is exceptionally difficult to define and to regulate given the chemical variations of natural commodities. We therefore need to invent new methods of geographical analysis in order to understand where nature and society meet and overlap, such as legal geographies of responsibility (Atkins 2007; Atkins, Hassan and Dunn 2007). My third interest is obesity. This is different from the first topic because here the problem is not so much

what is in the food as in how much we eat. It seems to me that there is an opportunity here for geographers because maps of body mass index or overweight at any scale show significant spatial variations that so far have not been explained satisfactorily. I have just finished writing a book that suggests that there is a strong historical dynamic in geographical trends in obes- ity that policy makers have largely ignored (Oddy, Atkins and Amilien 2009). Fourth, I have written about the cultural geographies of food (Atkins and Bowler 2001, chapters 19-23).

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There is now a large and fascinating literature on food and identity, spaces of consumption, and the social constructions of food biographies. One intriguing aspect has been the globalization of cuisines, which, although having its roots in the imperial adventures of the nineteenth century, has recently shifted a gear with the global expansion of restaurant chains such as McDonalds and the spread of ethnic restaurants in the wake of worldwide migration. The former has generated a convergence of cooking styles known as McDonaldization, and the latter has introduced metropolitan populations in wealthy countries to a previously unimagined variety of dishes. Anneke van Otterloo (2007) has written about the foodscape of Amsterdam and shows how its cosmopolitanism has evolved over 50 years. At first it was a matter of Dutch people experimenting with the foods of immigrants but now half of the citys inhabitants are of foreign origin, so that all elements of the food industry have to cater for what used to be minority, exotic raw materials, processed foods, and cooked dishes. Van Otterloo argues that the Dutch at one time or another have embraced all four positions of Wardes model of the diffusion of foreign and exotic foods: rejection, indigenization, restyling, and authentication. I was recently reading a market research report on the foods people eat in the different regions of Britain. As you know, in the UK we dont have the variety of typical foods that they have in Italy and France, where there are hundreds of local cheeses and wines, many methods of preparing meat, and a mouth-watering array of traditional recipes that have specific place connections. But there are re-

gional variations in consumer preference in the UK. Why is it, for instance, that the North East of England is least interested in experimenting with exotic cuisines? London is a miniature version of the worlds kitchens, with ethnic restaurants from more than a hundred countries. But the citizens of Newcastle, Durham and Sunderland are less likely to have tried a Chinese, Indian, Thai, TexMex meal in the last twelve months than people in any other region. Over time the UK generally has been remarkably receptive to exotic cuisines. The connexion with the former Empire is obvious, particularly returning colonial officials bringing recipes back with them, and since the 1950s immigrant groups have imported their own food cultures. The sourcing of raw materials from all over the world has meant the de facto globalization of the British diet over

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the last 150 years, longer than any other country. There is even British identity here, for instance the cup of tea, which was of course first of Chinese and then of Indian origin. We imagine and re-imagine the world through culinary globalization. We are genuinely interested in the place associations of origin, but usually settle for a kind of performance or theatre of stereotypes when we enter a restaurant. The food we are offered may bear only a passing resemblance to authentic dishes, firstly because mass catering demands a simplification of ingredients and cooking methods, and secondly because recipes and menus are always adjusted to suit local taste. A third complication is that Britains 9,000 Indian restaurants are mostly run by entrepreneurs from the Sylhet district of Bangladesh. They employ 70,000 cooks and waiters and their annual turnover is 3.8 billion. This fascinating stream of migration has offered opportunities to many people from that region and the remittances from wages and profits have had an impact on its economy. Returned migrants there are called Londoni and they live in style. The recent popularity of Japanese food is further evidence of global taste. In crossing cultural boundaries old meanings are lost and new ones created. The end product is a hybrid. Many of us like sushi, which is rice dressed with vinegar and served with raw fish, often rolled inside a seaweed skin. But the sushi sold in supermarkets and sushi restaurants would probably not appeal to Japanese food purists. The same is true of noodle restaurants and teppanyaki (griddled beef) restaurants. But does

it matter? The search for authenticity is fun but ultimately fruitless because experiencing the other is always influenced by ones own perceptions, skills and understandings. Do I mind that chicken tikka masala was invented in Glasgow and balti in Birmingham? Definitely not. I celebrate difference, variety, fusion and innovation. Isnt that an important part of what human geography is about? So, the geography of food has many guises. My own view is that this is one of the most exciting branches of contemporary human geography and one that is worthy of research at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. P.J.Atkins@durham.ac.uk References Atkins, P.J. (2007) Laboratories, laws and the career of a commodity, Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 25, 967-89 Atkins, P.J. (2008) Fear of animal foods: a century of zoonotics, Appetite 51, 18-21 Atkins, P.J. and Bowler, I.R. (2001) Food in society: economy, culture, geography London: Hodder Arnold Atkins, P.J., Hassan, M.M. and Dunn, C.E. (2006) Toxic torts: arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh and the legal geographies of responsibility, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31, 272-85 Oddy, D.J., Atkins, P.J. and Amilien, V. (Eds)(2009) The rise of obesity in Europe: a twentieth century food history Aldershot: Ashgate Van Otterloo, A. (2007) The changing position of exotic foods in post-war Amsterdam, pp 177-88 in Atkins, P.J., Lummel, P. and Oddy, D.J. (Eds) Food and the city in Europe since 1800 Aldershot: Ashgate

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