A New Culinary Culture in Colombia: Equality and Identity in the Interpretation of Traditional Cuisines
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A New Culinary Culture in Colombia: Equality and Identity in the Interpretation of Traditional Cuisines A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Juliana Duque-Mahecha May 2017 © 2017 Juliana Duque-Mahecha A New Culinary Culture in Colombia: Equality and Identity in the Interpretation of Traditional Cuisines Juliana Duque-Mahecha, Ph. D. Cornell University 2017 Abstract Cooking responds to this double entendre of a past that is collected, interpreted and then projected on to a present that then overcomes it. New food trends necessarily imply questions about social and cultural equality and identity. That which is novel is exciting and refreshing; it implies learning and broadening boundaries, which are often geographical and social and always cultural. However, the process also entails the inherent challenge to define and answer what is lost and valued in a new scenario and to understand to what purpose. Some categories that have been used to understand such historical processes of cultural production in social systems are class, race, ethnicity and gender, as well as concepts associated with territory, differentiation, integration and democratization, authenticity and exoticization. My purpose in conducting an analytical approach to the development of the gastronomical and culinary subject in Colombia and of building a diagnostic map of it, responds to the wish to contribute to the understanding of the function of food research in solving specific questions of inequality, estrangement, and deracination, as well as understanding new senses of belonging and appropriation that emerge because of urban reconfigurations. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I received a B.A. in Philosophy from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2003, a Diploma in Culinary Arts in 2004 from Fundación Universitaria Andina, and an M.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology form Cornell University in 2011. I have dedicated my career to Food Studies, starting with scholarly work but also including consultancy, editorial work and publishing. I have advised and coordinated projects of implementation of The Public Policy for the Knowledge, Safeguarding and Promotion of Food and Traditional Cuisines in Colombia (adopted by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia in 2012), and I recently published a book, Sabor de casa: doce maneras de hacer cocina colombiana y la historia de sus protagonistas –Taste of Home: Twelve Ways of Doing Colombian Cuisine and the History of their Protagonists–(Intermedio Editores, 2017), with the stories and visions of fourteen Colombian chefs who have lead the revitalization of Colombian cuisine in the last twenty years. In short, I have concentrated my professional efforts in the understanding and visualization of distinct culinary practices in a contemporary context. All this from a pragmatist vision of theories of knowledge, based on the establishment of reflections, relations and conclusions that can have a concrete use. I am currently working on the development of a digital platform called “The power of cuisine” – an analytic map of the culinary and food scene in Colombia that makes available relevant information from different sectors. My intention is to bring to light significant debates for the field of food studies in order to help develop a solid repository of culinary knowledge along with a conceptual and methodological base through which to articulate informative and comprehensive plans of culinary action. Such a platform could be replicated in different cities as a framework for sustainable projects that take advantage of the potential of cuisine to be the powerful tool it can be in conflict resolution processes. iv To my son Jerónimo v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Professors Jane Fajans, Steven Kaplan and María Antonia Garcés, for always making this an exciting, inspiring and exigent journey. I sincerely thank all the Faculty and Staff from the Department of Anthropology and from other departments of Cornell University, whom I had the pleasure to meet and work with. I also thank with my deepest gratitude my family, and friends and colleagues in Colombia and the United States for their vital support and constant encouragement. Final thanks must go to Cornell University for giving me the precious opportunity to make part of such a vibrant community. The honor is all mine. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1 …………………………………………………………………... 1 Vibrant cuisines 1. Before and after all, food is meaning 2. Splendor of a region Chapter 2 ………………………………………………………………. 24 The Current Culinary Scene in Colombia 1. The economic boom and the food service industry 2. Regional products and traditional cuisines Chart 1. Colombian traditional cuisines by sub-regions 3. The Food Landscape 3.1 Restaurants 3.2 Food events and food publishing 3.3 Food policy and related initiatives 4. Overview of conceptual debates and practical challenges Chapter 3 …………………………………………………………………... 55 Vitalization and revitalization of local culinary expressions 1. A natural tension between past and present vii 2. The voices of the Cooks 2.1 Colombian Cuisine in a few words 2.2. Tradition and innovation, a key tension 2.3 The value of pride and the construction of a culinary identity 3. Normative frameworks 4. Beyond action-reaction pairs and performative interpretations Chapter 4 …………………………………………………………………... 100 Thinking a Culinary Reality 1. Culinary ideologies 1.1. Between equality and differentiation: cultural authenticity 1.2. Between the past and present: the risk of exoticizing 1.3 The focus of a cultural policy in traditional knowledge 1.4 The power of national pride 2. Applicable theories and felt experiences Epilogue …………………………………………………………………... 134 Culinary preservation and renewal as a prospect Bibliography ……………………………………………………………… 139 viii PREFACE “The gastronome is neither imprisoned by tradition nor impressed by novelty”. “Periods of gastronomical changes are inevitably also periods of gastronomical polemics. When there are no polemics, there is no experimentation, since controversy does not arise if there is no tension between tradition and invention, or between on the contrary invention and academicism” (Revel 1982: 149, 155). ix This research project is about cuisine1 and identity, ethnicity and inequality in Colombia. I study different interpretations of Colombian culinary traditions and the discourses that are weaved from them, not necessarily as part of the same network but rather as part of the same cultural umbrella and national reality, looking at the what to do and how to protect these traditions in the torrent of innovating trends. The questions I ask are why should we protect these traditions in the current torrent of innovating trends? And how? How is the evolution of local cuisines being fostered and by whom? In its most formal definition, tradition is understood as “a way of thinking, behaving or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family society, etc. for a long time” and as a particular set of stories and beliefs (MW 2016: a). Correspondingly, innovation is defined as “the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices or methods” or the ideas, devices, or methods in themselves (MW 2016: b). That which is novel is exciting and refreshing; it implies learning and broadening boundaries, which are often geographical and always cultural. However, the process also entails the inherent challenge to define and answer what is lost and valued in a new scenario and to understand to what end. These specific questions of what to do and how to act poses in essence an issue of value codes and normative 1 I rely on the understanding of cuisine as set of practices resulted from both the knowing of how to prepare and use certain foods and the logic under which this knowledge is applied. I use Priscilla Ferguson’s definition of the term cuisine as “the properly cultural construct that systematizes culinary practices and transmutes the spontaneous culinary gesture into a stable cultural code. Cuisine, like dining, turns the private into the public, the singular into the collective, the material into the cultural” (Ferguson 2004: 3). What I herein call culinary knowledge, is a composite of the skill, the expertise—a technique—, and of the logic underlying it, that change from place to place and which in turn account for the actual differences between one cuisine and the other. x frameworks, evidenced in daily decisions regarding food, that necessarily imply questions about individual and collective definitions of the self and about social and cultural cohesion or exclusion. Therefore, my purpose in conducting an analytical approach to the development of the gastronomical and culinary subject in Colombia and of building a diagnostic map of it, responds to the wish to contribute to the understanding of the function of the anthropological perspective and an interdisciplinary approach in solving specific questions of inequality, estrangement, and deracination, as well as understanding new senses of belonging and appropriation that emerge because of urban reconfigurations. As the set of practices that signify sociocultural, economic and political aspects of food production, processing and consumption food helps to construct senses of belonging. Within that universe, cooking is one of the key practices that helps to define who we are individually and collectively, serving as a vessel