Abstract
Scholars believe that cosmopolitans—individuals who are open to foreign cultures—contribute to the adoption of Euro-American conceptions of food in the Global South. However, there remains a dearth in our understanding of the links between globalization, cosmopolitanism, and the reproduction of food and food cultures more broadly. In this paper, I draw from the sociology of translation to examine the mechanisms by which cosmopolitans reproduce food across space and time, a conceptual approach I refer to as ‘cosmopolitan translations of food.’ This approach focuses on how human and non-human actants (mostly cosmopolitans themselves) mediate and translate the discursive and material elements of food as they travel from one geographic context to another. The broader history, socio-culture, and political economy where cosmopolitan actants are situated further influence these translations, resulting in diverse expressions of food globalization. I illustrate the merits of this approach by examining the emergence of alternative food in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Based on qualitative research, I find that alternative food in Manila has striking similarities to and notable differences from its counterparts in the United States. I purport that these similarities and differences can be attributed to Filipino cosmopolitans’ unconscious and intentional translations of what they understand as alternative food. Mediating these layers of translations are Filipino cosmopolitans’ mobilities and access to new media, as well as the colonial histories and postcolonial encounters that define their consumption tastes.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
There is an extensive literature on alternative food networks that debates the movement’s transformative promise and its discontents. I will not engage that expansive literature in this paper. Instead, I refer the readers to Goodman et al. (2012) for their comprehensive review.
Johnston and Baumann (2015) and Peterson and Kern (1996) do not necessarily refer to cosmopolitanism when describing omnivorous cultural practices, although Olliveir (2008) and Cheyne and Binder (2010) use these two concepts interchangeably. Cultural omnivorousness, however, can still be a useful concept in this paper, as consumers with cultural omnivorous tendencies may also be culinary cosmopolitans, although this may not always be the case.
Latour (2005, p. 216) discusses the relations between the “intra-psyche” (within the subject) and the “extra-psyche” (beyond the subject).
Due to space constraints, I will not delve into the debates on ANT’s compatibility with political economy/ecology. I invite the readers to refer to Lave (2015).
This number includes multiple branches of the same restaurants.
Farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture are emerging in Manila. I did not include them in this paper because they merit a separate analysis, although the translation dynamics could parallel those found in the professional culinary networks.
Champorado, or chocolate rice porridge, is a Spanish inspired dish that has become a classic Filipino breakfast meal. Inasal is a Filipino variant of roast chicken marinated with a calamansi (Citrofortunella microcarpa) and vinegar mixture.
It is highly likely that consumers of alternative food who espouse socioecological politics exist in Manila, but none of those I interviewed explicitly indicated so. They would probably subscribe to these politics if given a choice, but would not mention such concerns if unprompted.
I used pseudonyms throughout the paper to protect the identity of my participants.
References
Adel, R. 2019. Filipinos spend ‘most time’ in social media in the world: Poll. Philippine Star. https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/08/25/1946329/filipinos-spend-most-time-social-media-world-poll. Accessed 19 October 2019.
Appiah, A. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. New York: W.W. Norton.
Barua, M. 2014. Circulating elephants: Unpacking the geographies of a cosmopolitan animal. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39 (4): 559–573.
Beck, U. 2004. Cosmopolitan realism: On the distinction between cosmopolitanism in philosophy and the social sciences. Global Networks 4 (2): 131–156.
Beck, U. 2006. The cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
Bello, W. 2009. Neoliberalism as hegemonic ideology in the Philippines: Rise, apogee, and crisis. Philippine Sociological Review 5: 9–19.
Bonne, K., and W. Verbeke. 2008. Religious values informing halal meat production and the control and delivery of halal credence quality. Agriculture and Human Values 25 (1): 35–47.
Bookman, S. 2013. Branded cosmopolitanisms: “Global” coffee brands and the co-creation of “cosmopolitan cool”. Cultural Sociology 7 (1): 56–72.
Braun, B. 2002. The intemperate rainforest: Nature, culture and power on Canada’s West Coast. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Calhoun, C.J. 2002. The class consciousness of frequent travelers: Toward a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (4): 869–897.
Callon, M. 1990. Techno-economic networks and irreversibility. The Sociological Review 38 (S1): 132–161.
Cappeliez, S., and J. Johnston. 2013. From meat and potatoes to “real-deal” rotis: Exploring everyday culinary cosmopolitanism. Poetics 41 (5): 433–455.
Castree, N. 2002. False antithesis? Marxism, nature and actor-networks. Antipode 34 (1): 111–146.
Chan, K.-B. 2002. Both sides, now: Culture contact, hybridization, and cosmopolitanism. In Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context, and practice, ed. S. Vertovec and R. Cohen, 191–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cheyne, A., and A. Binder. 2010. Cosmopolitan preferences: The constitutive role of place in American elite taste for hip-hop music 1991–2005. Poetics 38 (3): 336–364.
Claridades, J. 2016. Philippines food service—Hotel Restaurant HRI sectoral report. Global Agriculture Information Network. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Food%20Service%20-%20Hotel%20Restaurant%20Institutional_Manila_Philippines_12-13-2016.pdf. Accessed 11 July 2018.
Constantino, R. 1970. The mis-education of the Filipino. Journal of Contemporary Asia 1: 428–443.
Cook, I., and P. Crang. 1996. The world on a plate: Culinary culture, displacement and geographical knowledges. Journal of Material Culture 1 (2): 131–153.
Delanty, G. 2009. The cosmopolitan imagination: The renewal of critical social theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doeppers, D.F. 2016. Feeding Manila in peace and war, 1850–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Duruz, J. 2005. Eating at the borders: Culinary journeys. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23 (1): 51–69.
DuPuis, E.M., and D. Goodman. 2005. Should we go “home” to eat? Toward a reflexive politics of localism. Journal of Rural Studies 21 (3): 359–371.
Emonstpool, J., and C. Georgi. 2017. A cosmopolitan return to nature: How combining aesthetization and moralization processes express distinction in food consumption. Consumption Markets & Culture 20 (4): 306–328.
Fernandez, D.G. 1994. Tikim: Essays on Philippine food and culture. Manila: Anvil Publishing.
Fernandez, D.G., and E.N. Alegre. 1988. Sarap: Essays on Philippine food. Manila: Mr. and Ms. Publishing Company.
Fine, B. 2005. From actor-network theory to political economy. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16 (4): 91–108.
Goodman, D. 1999. Agro-food studies in the ‘age of ecology’: Nature, corporeality, bio-politics. Sociologia Ruralis 39 (1): 17–37.
Goodman, D. 2000. Organic and conventional agriculture: Materializing discourse and agro-ecological managerialism. Agriculture and Human Values 17: 215–219.
Goodman, D., E.M. DuPuis, and M.K. Goodman. 2012. Alternative food networks: Knowledge, place and politics. New York: Routledge.
Grosglik, R. 2017. Citizen-consumer revisited: The cultural meanings of organic food consumption in Israel. Journal of Consumer Culture 17 (3): 732–751.
Guevarra, S.V., C.F. Gatchalian, and S.A.P. Tiatco. 2014. Performing cosmopolitan entanglement in the Philippine pista: Sariaya Agawam Festival. Social Science Diliman 10: 1–29.
Guthman, J. 2003. Fast food/organic food: Reflexive tastes and the making of “yuppie chow”. Social & Cultural Geographies 4 (1): 45–58.
Guthman, J. 2008. Neoliberalism and the making of food politics in California. Geoforum 39 (3): 1171–1183.
Guthman, J., and E.M. DuPuis. 2006. Embodying neoliberalism: Economy, culture, and the politics of fat. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24 (3): 427–448.
Hannerz, U. 1990. Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. Theory, Culture & Society 7 (2–3): 237–251.
Harper, G.C., and A. Makatouni. 2002. Consumer perception of organic food production and farm animal welfare. British Food Journal 104 (3/4/5): 287–299.
Heldke, L. 2003. Exotic appetites. London: Routledge.
Higgins, V. 2006. Re-figuring the problem of farmer agency in agri-food studies: A translation approach. Agriculture and Human Values 23 (1): 51–62.
Huddart Kennedy, E., J.R. Parkins, and J. Johnston. 2018. Food activists, consumer strategies, and the democratic imagination: Insights from the eat-local movement. Journal of Consumer Culture 18 (1): 149–168.
Inglis, D., and D. Gimlin (eds.). 2009. The globalization of food. Oxford: Berg.
Isaac, M. 2016. Instagram may change your feed, personalizing it with an algorithm. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/technology/instagram-feed.html. Accessed 21 Dec 2018.
Jalais, A. 2008. Unmasking the cosmopolitan tiger. Nature and Culture 3 (1): 25–40.
Jarosz, L. 2000. Understanding agri-food networks as social relations. Agriculture and Human Values 17 (3): 279–283.
Jocano, F. 1998. Filipino prehistory: Rediscovering pre-colonial heritage. Quezon City: Punlad Publications.
Johnston, J., and S. Baumann. 2015. Foodies: Democracy and distinction in the gourmet foodscape, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Johnston, J., S. Baumann, and K. Cairns. 2009. The national and the cosmopolitan in cuisine: Constructing America through gourmet food writing. In The globalization of food, ed. D. Inglis and D. Gimlin, 161–184. Oxford: Berg.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B., and D.G. Fernandez. 2003. Culture ingested: On the indigenization of Philippine food. Gastronomica 3 (1): 58–71.
Kjeldgaard, D. 2018. Will consumer cosmopolitanism save the world? In Should it? In cosmopolitanism, markets, and consumption: A critical global perspective, ed. J. Emontspool and I. Woodward, 267–275. Cham: Palgrave McMillan.
Kloppenburg Jr., J., S. Lezberg, K. De Master, G.W. Stevenson, and J. Hendrickson. 2000. Tasking food, tasting sustainability: Defining the attributes of an alternative food system with competent, ordinary people. Human Organization 59 (2): 177–186.
Latour, B. 2004. Whose cosmos, which cosmopolitics? Comments on the peace terms of Ulrich Beck. Common Knowledge 10: 450–462.
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, B. 1983. Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world. In The science studies reader, ed. M. Biagioli, 258–275. London: Routledge.
Latour, B. 1987. Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lave, R. 2015. Reassembling the structural: Political ecology and actor-network theory. In The Routledge handbook of political ecology, ed. T. Perrault, G. Bridge, and J. McCarthy, 213–223. New York: Routledge.
Law, J. 1999. After ANT: Complexity, naming and topology. In Actor network theory and after, ed. J. Law and J. Hassard, 1–14. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lizardo, O. 2006. How cultural tastes shape personal networks. American Sociological Review 71: 778–807.
Lockie, S. 2009. Responsibility and agency within alternative food networks: Assembling the citizen consumer. Agriculture and Human Values 26: 193–201.
Lockie, S., and S. Kitto. 2000. Beyond the farm gate: Production-consumption networks and agri-food research. Sociologia Ruralis 40: 3–18.
Lockie, S., K. Lyons, G. Lawrence, and K. Mummery. 2002. Eating “green”: Motivations behind organic food consumption in Australia. Sociologia Ruralis 42 (1): 23–40.
Lui, D. 2015. Public curation and private collection: The production of knowledge on Pinterest.com. Critical Studies in Media Communication 32 (2): 128–142.
Massey, D. 1993. Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. In Mapping the future, ed. J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, and L. Tickner, 59–69. London: Routledge.
Matejowsky, T. 2007. SPAM and fast-food ‘glocalization’ in the Philippines. Food, Culture & Society 10 (1): 23–41.
Molz, J.G. 2007. Eating difference: The cosmopolitan mobilities of culinary tourism. Space and Culture 10 (1): 77–93.
Montefrio, M.J.F., and A.T. Johnson. 2019. Politics in participatory guarantee systems for organic food production. Journal of Rural Studies 65: 1–11.
Montefrio, M.J.F., J.C. De Chavez, A.P. Contreras, and D. Erasga. Hybridities and awkward constructions in Philippine locavorism: Reframing global-local dynamics through assemblage thinking. Food, Culture & Society (forthcoming).
Nützanadel, A., and F. Trentmann (eds.). 2008. Food and globalization: Consumption, markets and politics in the modern world. Oxford: Berg.
Ollivier, M. 2008. Modes of openness to cultural diversity: Humanist, populist, practical and indifferent. Poetics 36 (2–3): 120–147.
Peterson, R.A., and R.M. Kern. 1996. Changing highbrow taste: From snob to omnivore. American Sociological Review 61 (5): 900–907.
Phillips, L. 2006. Food and globalization. Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 37–57.
Raynolds, L.T. 2004. The globalization of organic agro-food networks. World Development 32 (5): 725–743.
Rico, J-A., and K.R.C. de Leon. 2017. State of power 2017: Mall culture and consumerism in the Philippines. Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/stateofpower2017-mall-culture.pdf. Accessed 27 Aug 2018.
Robbins, P. 2007. Lawn people: How grasses, weeds, and chemicals make us who we are. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Saito, H. 2011. An actor-network theory of cosmopolitanism. Sociological Theory 29 (2): 124–149.
Schubert, F., J. Kandampully, D. Solnet, and A. Kralj. 2010. Exploring consumer perceptions of green restaurants in the US. Tourism and Hospitality Research 10 (4): 286–300.
Sklair, L. 2011. The transnational capitalist class. Oxford: Blackwell.
Slocum, R. 2007. Whiteness, space, and alternative food practice. Geoforum 38 (3): 520–533.
Soco, A. 2008. Changing the discourse on return migrants: Cosmopolitanism and the reintegration of return Filipino migrant domestic workers. Philippine Sociological Review 56: 1–19.
Thompson, C.J., and S.K. Tambyah. 1999. Trying to be cosmopolitan. Journal of Consumer Research 26 (3): 214–241.
van der Veer, P. 2002. Colonial cosmopolitanism. In Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context, and practice, ed. S. Vertovec and R. Cohen, 165–179. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Dijck, J. 2013. The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vertovec, C., and R. Cohen. 2002. Introduction: Conceiving cosmopolitanism. In Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context, and practice, ed. S. Vertovec and R. Cohen, 1–22. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Warf, B. 2015. Global cities, cosmopolitanism, and geographies of tolerance. Urban Geography 36 (6): 927–946.
Woodward, I., and J. Emontspool. 2018. Conceptualizing the field. Consuming the other, marketing difference. In Cosmopolitanism, markets, and consumption, ed. J. Emontspool and I. Woodward, 11–37. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
Yeoh, B.S.A., and W. Lin. 2018. Cosmopolitanism in cities and beyond. In Routledge international handbook of cosmopolitanism studies, ed. G. Delanty, 299–312. New York: Routledge.
Zepeda, L., and D. Deal. 2009. Organic and local food consumer behaviour: Alphabet theory. International Journal of Consumer Studies 33 (6): 697–705.
Zitcer, A. 2015. Food co-ops and the paradox of exclusivity. Antipode 47 (3): 812–828.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful for the research support provided by Yale-NUS College. I would also like to thank Jane Jacobs, Greg de St. Maurice, Guy Leedon, Ariana Gunderson, and Caroline Erb-Medina for their feedback on the early drafts of this paper. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to all the cosmopolitan consumers, marketers, and producers of alternative food in Manila who participated in this research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Montefrio, M.J.F. Cosmopolitan translations of food and the case of alternative eating in Manila, the Philippines. Agric Hum Values 37, 479–494 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-10000-z
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-10000-z