Aditi Someshwar
Food is central to all of our lives, an essential ingredient for our mind, body, and soul. It is also a severely overlooked dimension of how countries exercise power. Cuisine and culinary premise is an unconscious yet effective mechanism of influencing perception and image with very real world consequences in the form of bilateral treaties, trade agreements, and tourism.
Setting The Plate - Culinary Exchange
To understand the way in which culinary diplomacy is practised, it is imperative to understand the different levels of depth within influence. The three successive steps to achieving significant soft power influence are cultural exchange, democratic change and systemic change. Cultural exchange demands the dissemination of propaganda on a global scale; the act of consuming food and acknowledging a culture via consumption allows people to experience the ideas of a culture in the most sympathetic manner. This cultural exchange is evidenced with the increasing popularity of South Korean cuisine worldwide, particularly with the notable household ingredient, kimchi. Through the South Korean government getting kimchi protected Unesco’s list of intangible cultural heritage, they were able to make a strong cultural statement and influence people across the world to internalise and take seriously cultural materials such as ingredients, cook books, restaurants involving their cuisine.
Democratic change requires ‘alien’ food’s symbolisms, norms and messages to become ingrained into the society, where the local population actually start actually using and considering the foreign cuisine as a part of their own daily lives. Indian food in the UK follows this exactly as flavours like “Chai” and “Tikka Masala” have been completely adopted locally and considered a part of most British people’s usual food habits.
Finally, democratic change becomes systemic change when soft food-power (through cultural propaganda) has embedded the norms and values so deep within the government and society that it can play a role in effectively influencing decision making processes. This is where culinary diplomacy holds true power as it can influence policy.
Serving the Platter - Policy Potential
The first policy potential is in regards to the image and reputation management a country can levy through food culture. Sushi and Ramen culture has been well exported by Japan, with the aforementioned merit. Both products have been able to retain their Japanese identity while simultaneously being viewed as modern and trendy. The Japanese government has been committed to selling the correct image of Japan and has done so by strictly regulating customer experience globally. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries formed a panel of experts to inspect Japanese restaurants across the world for authenticity, with warnings and consequences for those that were not meeting standards. While Japan still only wields single-issue based soft power in this regard, its growing acceptance helps shape their global identity and the acceptance of their framed identity.
Another major policy potential of culinary diplomacy is when strengthening ties of trade and tourism. This is successfully seen in Malaysia, where the government has focussed on food as a significant part of the tourism strategy. The Malaysian government has utilised food heritage to promote and improve ideas and perception of themselves as a perfect holiday destination given that food is believed to be a primary source of attraction for many tourist groups. Policy makers also saw this as a method to enhance their export sector. The “food paradise” that Malaysia branded itself as was majorly effective as it pushed for food tours and activities which both supported the local economy and allowed tourists to connect with the local culture intimately. Since the introduction of food tourism into the policy room, tourism numbers have increased significantly, and the sector now stands as the third largest contributor to the Malaysian economy.
Finally, the most optimistic use of food diplomacy is to influence conflict prevention through creating cross-cultural understanding and fostering community between various distinct groups. A pioneer instance of this is the annual food festival in France which promotes refugee chefs taking over restaurant kitchens across the country. The restaurants pay the chefs for their labour and cover costs while the festival gets a cut of profits which they donate to relevant charities. This cultural exchange through food deeply humanised refugees within the French community and fostered understanding and acceptance within the public. The festival has spread to the US and the UK as well, being practiced in major cities like New York, San Francisco and London.
Clean Plates - The Future
It is evident that culinary diplomacy leverages great soft-power influence and can lead to strong policy implications. However, it is pertinent to mention that we live in an incredibly globalised world, that has no means to stop exponentially expelling cultural borders. This raises great concerns for a future where culinary diplomacy continues to be increasingly effective. This discussion of homogenisation of culture is directly referenced in The End of History? By Francis Fukuyama who argued for a framework of democratic peace. Hence, while it is clear that culinary soft power used effectively can promote nations to think and consume in a way that fosters cultural understandings that change ideologies, it also runs the risk of leading to no policy influence due to expedited growth of a unified global culture with fewer differences to exploit as diplomatic assets.
References
Fukuyama, F. (2017). Francis Fukuyama (1989), “the end of history?”, the National Interest, 16, pp. 3-18 [173-89]. Foreign Policy, 197–214. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315255156-18
Fukuyama, F. (2020). The end of history and the last man. Penguin Books.
Hussin, H. (2018). Gastronomy, tourism, and the soft power of Malaysia. Sage Open, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018809211
The Indian influence in the UK: Beyond curry and culture . Sociology Institute. (2022, December 22). https://sociology.institute/diaspora-transnational-communities/indian-influence-uk-curry-culture/#the-journey-to-a-new-home-historical-migration-patterns
Palat, R. A. (2015). Empire, Food and the Diaspora: Indian restaurants in Britain. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38(2), 171–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2015.1019603
Refugee Food Festival 2024. Refugee Food Festival 2024 - made with softr.io. (n.d.). https://festival.refugee-food.org/
Reynolds, C. J. (2012). The soft power of food: A diplomacy of hamburgers and sushi? Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1(2), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.18848/2160-1933/cgp/v01i02/40518
Safronova, V. (2024, January 23). Kitchen diplomacy: How governments use food as a soft power. The Parliament Magazine. https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/food-diplomacy-gastrodiplomacy-europe
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