Cuisine and Symbolic Capital

Book excerpt: This collection of interdisciplinary essays examines food as it mediates social relationships and self-presentation in a variety of international films and literature. Authors explore the ways that making, eating and thinking about food reveals culture. In doing so the essays highlight how food and foodways become a type of symbolic capital, which influences the larger concern of cultural identity. Essays are organized into three central themes: Culinary Translations of Identity: From Britain to China; Food as Metaphor in Contemporary German Writing; and Love, Feasting and the Symbolic Power of Food in French Writing. Each essay investigates the uses of food as a way to apprehend cultural meaning. The essays presented provide theoretical templates for the study of food in a wide range of international film and literature,