Negotiating cultural boundaries: Food, travel and consumer identities

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by  Bardhia F., Ostbergb J., Bengtssonc A.

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Negotiating cultural boundaries: Food, travel and consumer identities
Fleura Bardhi a; Jacob Ostberg b;Anders Bengtsson c
a Marketing Group, College of Business Administration, Boston, USA b Centre for Fashion Studies,
Stockholm University School of Business, Stockholm, Sweden c Protobrand Sciences, Boston, USA
Online publication date: 21 April 2010
To cite this Article Bardhi, Fleura , Ostberg, Jacob andBengtsson, Anders(2010) 'Negotiating cultural boundaries: Food,
travel and consumer identities', Consumption Markets & Culture, 13: 2, 133 — 157
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10253860903562148
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10253860903562148

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Consumption Markets & Culture
Vol. 13, No. 2, June 2010, 133–157
Negotiating cultural boundaries: Food, travel and consumer
identities
Fleura Bardhia*, Jacob Ostbergb and Anders Bengtssonc
aMarketing Group, College of Business Administration, Boston, USA; bCentre for Fashion
Studies, Stockholm University School of Business, Stockholm, Sweden; cProtobrand Sciences,
Boston, USA
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This study addresses the role of food in boundary crossing and maintenance
processes in the context of short-term mobility. We utilize an identity and practice
theory approach to understand the ways travelers relate to food in the encounter
0 with the cultural different Other. The study was conducted through interviews with
1
0 28 American consumers after a 10-day trip to China. A semiotic data interpretation
2

y revealed the ways the informants made sense of their cultural experience in China
a
M through a continuous process of categorization of foods. Counter to the
7
5 expectations of food consumption as the site of boundary crossing, we find that
4
4: consumption of food abroad becomes a symbolic project of maintaining
1
boundaries with the Other and sustaining a sense of home. The encounter with the
:
At Other through food caused anxiety and alienation, which consumers dealt with by

m] consuming familiar, western foods that enabled the maintenance of an embodied
u
ti sense of comfort and a familiar sense of home. We further suggest that lack of local
r
o cultural capital and marketplace mythologies about the Other as factors that shaped
s
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o and elevated the negative experience during travel.
C

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CO Keywords: consumer identity; cultural capital; food; global consumer culture;
I
E tourism; travel
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ed Travel experiences take place in a liminal space between home and the destination,
d
oa where travelers are away from daily life and socio-cultural norms, and as such,
l
n
w consumption during travel is shaped by the tension between these two anchoring
o
D
points (Hannerz 1990; MacCannell 1973). Consumption during travel involves
boundary crossing and maintenance processes (Belk 1997): on the one hand travelers
engage in exploratory, adventurous consumption to experience the cultural different
Other, while on the other hand travelers engage in consumption that enables them to
maintain a connection to the home left behind. Food consumption is central in defin-
ing who we are (Lupton 1996) and an important everyday consumption activity; thus
travelers negotiate boundary crossing and boundary maintenance through their food
consumption repeatedly during travel. In this paper, we examine these boundary
processes through the lens of food consumption and aim to provide an understanding
of the ways that travelers relate to the different types of foods they encounter abroad
and the role that these relationships play in their travel experiences.
Research on food consumption has argued that food is the site where the relationship
between the self and the Other is contested. Food cultures have become increasingly
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1025-3866 print/ISSN 1477-223X online
© 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10253860903562148
http://www.informaworld.com
134 F. Bardhi et al.
transnational in character (Ekström and Askegaard 2000) enabling the encounter and
consumption of the culturally different Other at home (Martin 2005). Global mobility
has not only introduced ethnic varieties in local cuisines, but these ethnic foods have
become part of the dietary habits and local food tastes, such as Mexican and Chinese
cuisines in the US or the Döner kebab version of Turkish food in Northern Europe.
Martin (2005) takes this further arguing that food has not only become the locus of inno-
vative boundary crossing in other cultural venues (see also Fonseca 2005; Heldke 2003),
but also enables the incorporation of the Other into the self. As domestic food cultures
become increasingly transnational, it problematizes the organization of domestic food
into neat categories of what is local and what is foreign (Cook and Crang 1996). The
processes of globalization on the one hand result in a homogenization of food cultures,
and on the other hand opens up for an increased emphasis on easily identifiable cues
that distinguish various local cultures (Askegaard and Kjeldgaard 2007). In today’s
global consumptionscape, international cuisines therefore risk becoming caricatures of
their original renditions (cf. Brownlie, Hewer, and Horne 2005). Overall, this line of
research suggests that the transnational nature of the domestic food cultures have chal-
10 lenged the western self/other duality and food enables boundary crossing and encounters
0
2
with the Other at home. However, we know little about the way food is consumed
y
a
M abroad, away from the domestic or home culture context, especially during short-term
7
5 travel.
4
:
4 Travel experiences are accompanied by a search for difference, variety seeking,
1

t: pleasure and play with the exotic Other. Previous research on tourism has illustrated
A
] that when it comes to shopping and souvenirs there are ample examples of these types
m
u
i of variety seeking, exploratory, boundary-crossing practices among travelers (Belk
t
r
so 1997). Thus, consumption activities during travel are often characterized as experi-
n
Co ence and play, where the purpose of consumer actions is autotelic (Holt 1995). Similar

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O to the research on food consumption at home, this line of research would suggest that
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I
NE food consumption during travel can be the site of boundary crossing involving
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: experience and play practices.
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B
However, food tastes and consumption are often characterized as conservative and
d
e
ad resistant to change during mobility. Acculturation studies show that sojourner
o
nl consumers behave conservatively when it comes to food consumption and that food
w
o
D tastes are among the most resistant during acculturation (Gilly 1995; Thompson and
Tambyah 1999). Furthermore, Robinson (2005) reminds us that travel is grounded in
the “interior” realities of human existence: the experience of everyday, the familiari-
ties of the ordinary and the patterns and processes of our interaction with one another
and the material world. This line of research, then, suggests that food consumption
may be the site of boundary maintenance during mobility. This stands in contrast to
the research findings on food consumption and encounters with the Other at home,
which are typically described in a more embracing manner (Martin 2005), as well as
tourism research expectations that would characterize food consumption practices as
play and experience. We examine this debate on the role of food in the context of
short-term mobility.
Research on food consumption during mobility is mostly derived from studies of
mobile consumers in acculturation contexts. In general, boundary crossing and main-
tenance research in consumer behavior has been predominantly the focus of consumer
acculturation studies. Consumer acculturation examines movement and adaptation of
consumers into a new culture (Peñaloza 1994). Acculturation involves consumer
socialization processes during long-term mobility or relocation to a foreign country.
Consumption Markets & Culture 135
However, research boundary consumption processes during short-term travel, such as
tourist experiences, school trips, work-related traveling, or even conference atten-
dence, is lacking in consumer research. We do not have an understanding of boundary
crossing and maintenance experiences in contexts where consumer adaptation (in the
acculturation sense) does not take place.
To address this gap in the literature we have purposefully selected the context of
food consumption during short-term mobility. By studying food consumption and the
role of food in the encounter with the Other abroad, we are foregrounding variations
across spatial circumstances (Arnould, Price, and Moisio 2006) and aim to address the
gap in the food consumption literature focused predominantly on the domestic
context. By foregrounding variations across time circumstances in studying food
consumption during short-term travel (Arnould, Price, and Moisio 2006), we aim to
identify the role of food in boundary crossing and maintenance processes outside the
consumer adaptation framework. We report findings from an interpretive study of
American travelers’ food experiences in China during a short-term visit. By studying
travelers’ food experiences in a cultural setting where the types of food that the infor-
10 mants are used to from home are less readily available, we get access to an interesting
0
2
context that yield insights about the role of food as a cultural resource when abroad,
y
a
M as well as boundary crossing and maintenance practices.
7

5
4
:
4
1
: Food consumption, identity and travel
t
A
] Prior research on food has suggested a strong relationship between food and self-
m
u
i identity. We also take the perspective that food is never just about eating and eating
t
r
so is never just a biological process (Rozin 1999; Watson and Caldwell 2005). Equally
n
Co important are the meanings and representations behind the food and the way food

N
O shapes both our individual and collective identities (McDonagh and Prothero 2005,
C
I
NE 2). Food consumption practices can therefore never be understood fully from the
[
: perspective of sustenance; rather the symbolic properties of food must be taken into
y
B
consideration.
d
e
ad To examine boundary crossing and maintenance practices through food during
o
nl short-term travel, we adapt Holt’s (1995) terminology and conceptualization of
w
o
D consumption practices. Holt (1995, 1) defines consumption practices as “social
actions in which consumers make sense of consumption objects [in this study, food]
in a variety of ways.” Holt (1995) articulates a typology of four consumption prac-
tices, respectively: experience, play, integration and categorization. According to Holt
(1995, 3), consuming as experience involves the ways consumers make sense and
respond to a consumption context. Consuming as integration represents the methods
used by consumers to enhance the perception that a valued consumption object is a
constitutive element of their identity (Holt 1995, 6). Classification consists of
processes in which consumers use objects to classify themselves in relation to relevant
others (Holt 1995, 10). Play involves consumer to object to consumer interaction that
has no other end; interaction for interaction’s sake (Holt 1995, 9).
From this Bourdieuian perspective, consumption practices are viewed as the
embodied skills that people bring to bear in everyday activities and are shaped by
consumers’ habitus (Allen 2002; Bourdieu 1977; Holt 1995). Thus, we see food
tastes and food consumption practices as embodied, reflecting socialization processes
that work directly on the body. These embodied food tastes are shaped by one’s
socio-economic standing and home culture food regimes, and tend to be enduring and
136 F. Bardhi et al.
take considerable amount of time and effort to transform (Thompson and Tambyah
1999). Further, prior research suggests that food consumption is about being unique –
which in the fragmented late-modern world, where symbols from the market are
increasingly used as building blocks in identity construction (cf. Bengtsson, Ostberg,
and Kjeldgaard 2005) – is a fundamental aspect of our sense of self-identity (Fischler
1988, 287). On this more individual level, food consumption is central since any
given human individual is constructed, biologically, psychologically and socially by
the food he or she chooses to incorporate. The German saying “Man ist, was man
isst” captures many of the facets of the self-identity construction phenomena
(Fischler 1988, 279).
In this study, we look at food consumption during travel as shaped by two oppos-
ing forces: (a) boundary crossing attraction of the encounter with the exotic Other,
reflected in the desire, play and variety seeking experiences in the consumption of
foreign foods, and (b) the groundedness of travel by the boundary maintenance of the
everyday experiences and the home-culture left behind that may be reflected in the
longing for home tastes and consumption of familiar foods. Prior research in
10 consumer acculturation has identified consumption as an important medium of nego-
0
2
tiating identity boundary crossing. The existing work on boundary crossing in accul-
y
a
M turation research has predominantly examined consumer identity work, “with
7
5 particular focus on the way that identity formation expresses dominant and minority
4
:
4 cultures” (Üstüner and Holt 2007, 42). Typically acculturation studies have examined
1

t: bicultural consumers with hybrid identities, such as Haitian immigrants in the US
A
] (Oswald 1999), Greenlandic immigrants in Denmark (Askegaard, Arnould, and
m
u
i Kjeldgaard 2005), East Asian immigrants in the UK (Lindridge, Hogg, and Shah
t
r
so 2004), and Turkish immigrants in Denmark (Ger and Ostegaard 1998). Consumption
n
Co practices during acculturation have also followed an identity performance framework,

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O where consumers are resisting, assimilating, acculturating or segmenting cultural
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I
NE identity positions (Peñaloza 1994; Askegaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005).
[
: Furthermore, prior work has emphasized the role of possessions and consumption ritu-
y
B
als in boundary crossing and maintenance practices during long-term mobility (Mehta
d
e
ad and Belk 1991; Belk 1992). However, little attention has been paid to consumption
o
nl practices of crossing or maintaining boundaries, especially outside the identity perfor-
w
o
D mance perspective.
Following the practice theory logic (Allen 2002; Holt 1995), when abroad, food
tastes may be resistant to change and food consumption of familiar domestic foods
will be experienced as spontaneous and natural. Studies of expatriates have shown the
extensive efforts these mobile consumers go through to secure familiar, “home” foods
as an identity anchoring mechanism to their home country (Gilly 1995; Thompson and
Tambyah 1999). Prior research has shown that mobile consumers resist changes in
such embodied food preferences and long for the cultural environments similar to
their home country (Thompson and Tambyah 1999). Thus, short-term travelers may
cope with cultural alienation through maintenance of these embodied food preferences
to recreate a sense of home in the body abroad. Additionally, travelers may instinc-
tively react to emerging situations of consuming local or foreign foods by utilizing
home-culture food regimes (Allen 2002; Marshall 2005). When the self is threatened
by the abundance of unfamiliar cultural cues at a foreign destination, food becomes an
anchor that reminds the travelers of who they really are and a way of reestablishing
familiarity and daily routines. Furthermore, “food consumption simultaneously asserts
the oneness of the ones eating the same and the otherness of whoever eats differently”
Consumption Markets & Culture 137
(Fischler 1988, 275). Food is essential in providing templates of accepted behaviors
in a given culture. As such, food consumption during mobility may involve categori-
zation processes (Holt 1995) and become a way of creating a distance from the Other.
We examine the role of food in these boundary processes during short-term mobility.
Method
The context of the study consists of a short-term visit of American visitors to
China. This context enables the study of consumer boundary negotiation practices
during short-term mobility to a different cultural context and the existential role of
food during such experiences. The empirical data for this study consist of accounts
of 28 middle-class American consumers’ experiences of food consumption during a
trip to China that lasted for 10 days. The informants participated in a global seminar
that included a trip to China as part of their graduate studies at a northeastern
private university in the United States. This travel seminar was an optional compo-
nent of their graduate studies and could be substituted with coursework with no
10 travel requirements. Furthermore, the informants could choose among various desti-
0
2 nations, such as China, Germany, the United Kingdom and Brazil. Typically the
y
a
M decision to travel to China was driven by a desire to get a first-hand experience of

7
5 the Chinese culture. Ultimately, all participants had made a voluntary choice to
4
4: travel to China.
1

: Informants for the study were 16 females and 12 males, ranging in age from 20 to
t
A
] 49 years old. All the informants were graduate students, with most of them being full
m
iu time employed with jobs that varied from Analysts to Managers to Vice-presidents.
t
r
o Based on their level of education (graduate), type of university (private) and profes-
s
n
Co sions (many at managerial levels), we characterize the informants as urban middle-

ON class consumers. While most of our informants had traveled abroad before for leisure
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E in North America and, in some instances, to Europe, this was the first trip to China
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: and Asia for all of the participants. An overview of informant profiles is presented in
y
B Table 1.
d
e
d Data collection took place during and after the trip to China. This was a group trip
a
o
nl with scheduled activities during the daytime, whereas most evenings were free for
w
Do individual exploration. Scheduled activities included business visits to Chinese and
foreign companies as well as visits to cultural sites, predominantly in Shanghai and
Beijing. About half of the dining options during the trip were predetermined by the
organizers where informants went to mainly local, Chinese restaurants. The local
restaurants were sit-down restaurants that catered to the Chinese upper-middle class
locally, and the meals were served in a communal style. Informants had many oppor-
tunities to make their own dining choices. Prior to the trip, the informants were
instructed to keep journal records of the food choices they made when they were the
deciding party. More specifically, the informants were asked to record what type of
restaurant they went to, what type of food they had and how they felt after having
eaten at the restaurant. The use of personal journals is an effective technique that helps
the informant to keep track of consumption practices that occur over time (Khare and
Inman 2006). When the informants returned to the United States, we used their
personal journals as the backbone for one-to-one in-depth interviews that lasted from
30 to 90 minutes with each of them. Similar to the photo-elicitation technique (Harper
2000; Heisley and Levy 1991), personal journals were utilized as probes during the
interviews to help informants to better remember their food choices in China and the
138 F. Bardhi et al.
Table 1. Profile of informants.
Informant Age Occupation Marital status Ethnicity
Andrew 30–39 Store manager Divorced Caucasian
Ben 30–39 Product manager Married Caucasian
Bethany 20–29 Student Single Caucasian
Bradley 30–39 Manager Married Afr. American
Daniel 40–49 Manager Married Caucasian
Danielle 20–29 Auditor Single Caucasian
Debbie 30–39 Administrative assistant Single Caucasian
Deidra 40–49 Principal Single Caucasian
Emily 20–29 Program manager Single Hispanic
Gracie 20–29 Student Married Hispanic
Grant 30–39 Student Married Caucasian
Greg 30–39 Project manager Single Caucasian
0 Kalvin 30–39 Fund administrator Married Afr. American
1
20 Katie 20–29 Student Single Caucasian

y
Ma Lewis 30–39 Analyst Single Caucasian

7 Logan 30–39 HR director Single Caucasian
5
4
: Mike 20–29 Inventory manager Single Caucasian
4
1
: Max 40–49 Director operations Married Caucasian
t
A
Melissa 20–29 Marketing rep Single Caucasian
]
m
iu Pamela 20–29 Product manager Single Caucasian
t
r
o Pauline 30–39 Director of finance Married Caucasian
s
n
Co Richard 20–29 Student Single Caucasian

N
O Sabrina 20–29 Portfolio accountant Single Hispanic
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I
NE Samantha 20–29 Business analyst Married Caucasian
[

: Sandra 20–29 Manager Single Caucasian
y
B
d Sarah 30–39 Senior VP finance Single Caucasian
e
d
a Sean 30–39 Associate VP Married Indian American
o
l
wn Wendy 20–29 Accounts payable manager Married Caucasian
o
D
particular experiences associated with each meal. The interviews revolved around
their overall tourist experience in China, their experiences with Chinese foods and
other types of foods they elected to consume.
The data for the study consist only of the information collected during the inter-
views conducted after the trip. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.
The interview transcripts were analyzed and coded following proper procedures of
qualitative data analysis (Miles and Huberman 1994; Strauss and Corbin 1998). The
researchers first read all the data to familiarize themselves with informants and their
experiences with food consumption and the overall personal experiences during the
visit to China. Within-case analysis focused on identifying the relationship that
consumers had with foreign and home foods; the ways their consumption of Chinese
food at home shaped consumption of Chinese food in China; and finally to identify
the factors that structure individual consumption of Chinese food abroad. We then
conducted systematic cross-case coding of transcripts focused on (a) unraveling the
ways that consumers make sense of their food experiences and (b) understanding the
Consumption Markets & Culture 139
ways they categorize food and the symbolic and existential role that these categories
play for them. Further data interpretation was aided by a semiotic analysis of the food
narratives.
A semiotic approach to the interpretation of food narratives
In order to interpret consumers’ accounts of their food experiences in China, we
followed a semiotic approach to examine how informants relate to food during travel.
It became apparent during data analysis that informants attempted to make sense of
their travel experience through constant categorization of their food consumption and
experience between home and in China. The concept of categorizations is fundamen-
tal to human understanding of the world, because “in moving about the world, we
automatically categorize” (Lakoff 1987, 8). We use an adaptation of Greimas’ semi-
otic square to structure our analysis of how the informants divide food into different
categories when they talk about their food experiences. The semiotic square is an
analytical tool that enables us to tease out the meanings informants inscribe on differ-
10 ent types of food in this context. Similar application and adaptations of the semiotic
0
2 square have been successfully employed in previous consumer culture theory research
y
a
M (see e.g. Kozinets 2008; Floch 1988).

7
5 The semiotic square is a visual representation of the relations which exist between
4
4: the distinctive features constituting a given semantic category (Floch 1988, 238). The
1

: cross-case analysis of transcripts identified two opposing categories, Chinese Food
t
A
] and Domestic Food, as dominating informants’ experience of food in China. Thus, the
m
iu semantic category underlying the accounts produced by the informants in the present
t
r
o study was Chinese Food and Domestic Food. The relation between these two may be
s
n
Co regarded as a semantic axis in which either term presupposes the other (as illustrated

ON by the contrariety in Figure 1 following in the findings section). It is important to
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E stress that the terms themselves matter less than the relations which inter-define them
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[
: (Floch 1988, 234). In other words, it is not crucial what definitional elements the
y
B informants used in categorizing the different foods as Chinese or domestic. Instead,
d
e
d what is important is to look at how they made one category meaningful in relation to
a
o
nl the other, how the different types of foods are placed in a system of signification (cf.
w
Do Nöth 1990) where they gain their meaning by their relative stance toward each other.
The semiotic square has an ability to penetrate and enrich apparent binary oppositions
(cf. Kozinets 2008, 868) and thus helps us illustrate the inherent complexities of the
semantic category of Chinese and domestic food. In accord with basic semiotic theory
in Saussure’s tradition (Nöth 1990), there is no meaning without difference; the cate-
gories themselves hold no meaning, instead meaning is actively constructed in the
difference between the signs.
The categorizations discussed and described in our findings are constructed from
the analyses of the transcripts and are based on how the participants implicitly cate-
gorized their food consumption in their narrations. The intention with such a catego-
rization is to examine how the Chinese and domestic foods are actively filled with
meaning in a manner that helps the consumer make sense of the world. Food
consumption, especially in a foreign context, is a symbolic project: “in Homo sapiens
food not only nourishes but also signifies” (Fischler 1988, 276). Scholars have noted
how food presents a rich symbolic alphabet through its diversity of color, texture,
smell and taste. Thereby, food has an ability to be elaborated and combined in infinite
ways to express hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries and transactions
140 F. Bardhi et al.
across boundaries (Counihan and van Esterik 1997; Douglas 1997). We acknowledge
that factors such as language problems or exhaustion from the travel or time differ-
ences may accentuate the level of distress the informants are expressing when talking
about their food experiences in China. Still, this is an integral part of short-term trav-
eling and should thus not be regarded as an alternative explanation but rather as an
important part of the cultural and symbolic aspects of the travel phenomenon we
discuss in this paper.
Experience with Chinese food at home
Since American food culture is increasingly transnational in character with the Chinese
cuisine being part of daily food consumption for many American consumers, it is
important to provide a description of the experiences our informants had with Chinese
food at home before the trip. This description provides the backdrop to our analysis of
informants’ encounters with Chinese food during their travel to China. Data indicate
that all informants have consumed Chinese food in the US before this trip.
10 Chinese restaurants and Chinese food have become an almost ubiquitous feature
0
2
of American urban and suburban life. According to the magazine Chinese Restaurant
y
a
M News, it is estimated that there are now nearly 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the United
7
5 States, accounting for nearly a third of all “ethnic restaurants” (Lu and Fine 1995). Our
4
:
4 informants live in an urban area with a China Town where 70% of the population is
1

t: Asian. The Chinese cuisine in town is predominantly Cantonese and the restaurants
A
] are run by Chinese immigrants primarily from the South of China and Hong Kong.
m
u
i The Chinese food our informants are familiar with is less spicy, more deep fried,
t
r
so contains relatively more sauce and is characterized as sweeter than the Chinese food
n
Co informants were exposed during the trip. Because the owners of the restaurants are

N
O first-generation migrants from China that have been in the US for a long time, the
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NE majority of Chinese food in this locality has sustained an older version of Chinese
[
: cooking. This is often commented on by new Chinese visitors and immigrants. The
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Northern Chinese cuisine, which the informants were exposed to during their trip, is
d
e
ad almost absent from the regional varieties present to our informants at home.
o
nl While Chinese food has been available for a long time in the US, it is available
w
o
D predominantly in a form that suits American tastes. Ethnic restaurants have purpose-
fully transformed ingredients and techniques of traditional recipes to meet American
tastes and Americanize their food (Lu and Fine 1995). While American consumers
select Chinese restaurants for their difference (its otherness), the display of otherness
had to remain within the context of American foodstuffs and presentations (Lu and
Fine 1995, 540). The Chinese food in our informants’ locality is Americanized to fit
the local tastes or because of lack of original ingredients. A further aspect that enhances
the difference between what our informants might envision as Chinese food while in
the US and the Chinese food they encountered while in China is the proliferation of
cultural texts – in the form of cook books, TV shows and cooking magazines – that
typically portrays a watered-down, globalized version of foreign foods (Brownlie,
Hewer, and Horne 2005, 19). These outlets are “tamed” to western standards and just
foreign enough to be exiting. Additionally, the meal format is also adjusted to
American tastes in that dishes are served individually instead of a communal way
and silverware is widely available without asking (Lu and Fine 1995). When the
participants experienced the Chinese food in China, these prior experiences with
Americanized versions made them less well-prepared for what was coming, thus
Consumption Markets & Culture 141
emphasizing the foreignness of the food. In the following section, we introduce the
empirical data and present our findings.
Findings
A relational perspective of food categories
The semiotic square uncovers the ways consumers make sense of food consumption
as travelers. We argue that informants use these food categorizations to make their stay
in China graspable and to classify themselves in relation to the relevant Other (Holt
1995). In the model, Chinese and Domestic Food are the two main categories and
informants frequently use them when describing their food consumption. Figure 1
depicts the semiotic square that represents a relational model of food categories. This
model takes its point of departure in two oppositions. The first opposition is the contra-
riety between an assertion, Chinese Food, and its negation, Domestic Food. The
second opposition is the contradictions between assertion and negation, Non Chinese
Food, and non-assertion and non-negation, Non Domestic Food (cf. Nöth 1990). The
0
1
0 assertion, Chinese Food, and its negation, Domestic Food, is constructed out of the
2

ay definitions used by the consumers during the interviews. The contradictions, that is,
M
7 non-Domestic and non-Chinese Food, are categories that are contingent upon the

5
4 assertion and its negation in that they are defined in opposition to them. The basic idea
:
4
1 is that Chinese and Domestic Food cannot be meaningfully conceptualized without
:
At each other.

]
m Figure 1.A relational perspective of food categories.
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C

N
O
C
I
E
N
[

:
y
B

d
e
d
a
o
l
n
w
o
D
Figure 1. A relational perspective of food categories.