Key Terms

Authenticity

 Refers to the original or traditional nature of a product, practice, or place. It is a problematic concept because it presumes the existence of a singular, deep, and essential culture and fails to acknowledge that tradition is a socially constructed and contested concept.

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Classism

 Prejudice for or against people belonging to a particular social class

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Commensality

The sharing of food with other people, which helps facilitate social interaction and bonding

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Culinary appropriation

The adoption of elements of a culture, including food, by others, typically for self-aggrandizing purposes such as social distinction or economic profit; appropriation subverts and homogenizes expressions of difference. Ethnic cuisine is often appropriate by chefs who “discover” and “improve” it, with great personal rewards.

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Equity

Providing needs so that everyone can be successful; recognizes that the starting point is not the same for groups of people

 

Family

A group of people related in some way, either by ancestry or by blood (consanguine) or by marriage (affine)

 

Fictive Kin

Individuals who claim no blood or marriage ties yet are important to a familyunit.

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Food influencing

The act of treating food as a prop in the service of one’s social media/digital goals

—often stemming from a commercial interest (selling) or influencing via the viewer’s aspirational goals

 

Food narrative

The way in which a story (narrative) is framed, discussed, recalled, and repeated (passed on) to others

 

Food studies

An interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary academic field devoted toexamining the relationships between human beings and food.

 

Food system

All activities, infrastructure, social institutions, and cultural beliefs within asocial group across the stages of production, distribution, and consumption

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Invented Traditions

A set of practices based largely on an idealized and fictionalized past; important for promoting social solidarity, establishing new social institutions and legitimizing existing ones, and socializing individuals into a culture; symbolizing social cohesion and creating a strong collective identity; establishing new social institutions and legitimizing existing ones. Some food scholars and activists argue that the U.S. celebration of Thanksgiving is such an invented tradition—grounded in an invented past, symbolizing national
unity, and reaffirming a distinct national identity based on the institution of the family

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Melting Pot

Metaphor for a society where many different peoples, cultures, and
individuals blend together to some imagined homogeneity (i.e., immigrants“become Americans”). The term “melting pot” is a contested one in that it assumes the Other discards their home country ways (clothing, language, rituals, foods, foodways) to adopt a single vision of the “American way.” Many find this term disrespectful, especially of foodways, which are intimately tied to our sense of place and our homelands