Mincing Words: Diasporic Food Journalism and the Cuisine of Southeast Asia

• In Event: Hopes from the Homeland: Foodways in Motion in Asian Diasporas

Abstract

The corpus of food and travel journalism provides a unique blend of content in which personal experience, Other-ness, the foreign, and diasporic cultures play central roles. It takes as its topic the only thing we must all consume to sustain life (food!) and sets in motion a process that converts the audience into active travellers, cooks, and eaters. This paper explores how this specific type of communication, in its depiction of Southeast Asian food cultures from 2005-2015, can offer critical insight and consumer-friendly information, and encourage reader participation and cross-cultural engagement. The paper addresses these questions: How do food and travel texts function as a medium in which audiences can engage with Others, in the cultural and culinary senses? How are traditional media practices and standards re-cast in the process?

These questions are important because they train a rigorous academic eye on a site where Others, representation, communication, audiences, cultures, and diaspora converge; exploring modes of cross-national understanding, and how the special case of food and travel journalism can play a crucial role in the process. The import of these questions corresponds directly to the power of social agency – specifically, the way readers, travelers, and eaters can take clear actions to effect cultural exchange - while investigating what type of structures are in place to support this pointed brand of journalism. Methodology includes keyword, textual, content, and qualitative analysis of texts from periodicals including New York Times, Saveur, Globe and Mail, and Gourmet Traveller.

Author

• Robert McKeown, Independent Scholar