I decided to briefly understand what opinions exist on the account of how our identification is formed and what role the tradition of preparing food and its consumption exist and how food as a whole affects our identification.
What is identification?
Identification - the act of recognizing and naming someone or something: Cambridge dictionary [online] At: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/identification (Accessed 15.01.2025)
identity - the fact of being, or feeling that you are, a particular type of person, organization, etc.; the qualities that make a person, organization, etc. different from others: Cambridge dictionary [online] At: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/identity (Accessed 15.01.2025)
“primary identification (Quick Reference) In psychoanalysis, a primitive form of identification (2), occurring during the oral stage, before any other type of object-relationship is formed. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) described this phenomenon in his book The Ego and the Id (1923): ‘At the very beginning, in the individual's primitive oral stage, object-cathexis and identification are no doubt indistinguishable from each other’ (Standard Edition, XIX, pp. 12–66, at p. 29).” Oxfordre Ference [online] At: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100345330 (Accessed 15.01.2025)
In other words identification as a psychological process where individuals internalize aspects of others (e.g., parents, cultural ideals) as part of their identity. Sigmund Freud agues that identity forms through early relationships and unconscious desires.
One more scholar Erik Erikson (born June 15, 1902, Frankfurt am Main, Germany—died May 12, 1994, Harwich, Massachusetts, U.S.) “conceived eight stages of development [(Childhood and Society (1950)], each confronting the individual with its own psychosocial demands, that continued into old age. Personality development, according to Erikson, takes place through a series of crises that must be overcome and internalized by the individual in preparation for the next developmental stage.” Britannica [online] At: https://www.britannica.com/science/psychological-development/Adolescence (Accessed 15.01.2025)
Erikson focused on identity development across life stages, emphasising adolescence as a critical period for forming identity through social and cultural roles. He also first used the term identity crisis, which means connecting individual identity with societal structures.
Complex identities
“This more complex perspective on identity has been developed by Stuart Hall, a cultural theorist who has argued that identity is not simply given or fixed, ‘it is a matter of “becoming” as well as of being’ (1990). He suggests that identity is something that is never complete, and that it is more helpful to think about ‘identification’ as a process rather than ‘identity’ as a fixed state (Hall, 1990, p. 51). Hall’s ideas suggest that ‘who we are’ is strongly determined by feeling an affinity with ‘people like us’ or people with whom we share ideas, values, beliefs or experiences.
Many people will share these similarities with people who surrounded them as they grow up (family, friends and communities), but Hall’s ideas of identity also allow for individuals being strongly influenced by experiences and relationships later in life, which can have equally profound influences on how we see ourselves” The Open University. Openlearn. Complex Identities [online] At: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-care-social-work/an-introduction-social-work/content-section-2.2.2 (Accessed 15.01.2025)
Stuart Hall defined identity as fluid and relational, shaped by cultural, historical, and media contexts. He emphasized that identity is a process of becoming rather than a fixed essence, shaped by the intersection of race, gender, and class.
It is also important to note one important aspect affecting our identification.
“When the prohibition against homosexuality is culturally pervasive, then the "loss" of homosexual love is precipitated through a prohibition that is repeated and ritualized throughout the culture.” (Butler, 1995, p. 172).
Thus Judith Butler proposing that gender identity is performative -constructed through repeated actions rather than innate characteristics. The Doctor of Gender and Queer Theory expanded identity discussions to include intersectionality and power dynamics.
One more theory about our identity described by Pierre Bourdieu: habitus
“Bourdieu coined the term "habitus" to refer to the embodied aspect of cultural capital - particularly the habits, skills, and dispositions an individual accumulates over their life.
Put simply, a person's habitus is how they would react to a given situation based on how they have reacted to things previously. In the right circumstances, our habitus can help us navigate different environments.
According to Bourdieu, habitus also includes our tastes and preferences for cultural objects such as food, art, and clothing, which are shaped by our social status. In his work Distinction (1984), he suggests that taste is culturally inherited and not innate. An upper-class individual appreciates "high art" because they are accustomed to it from a young age, while a working-class individual may not have developed the same habitus.” studysmarter. Pierre Bourdieu [online] At: https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/social-studies/famous-sociologists/pierre-bourdieu/ (Accessed 15.01.2025)
In other words, habitus - the deeply ingrained habits, behaviours, and dispositions shaped by social and cultural environments. Bourdieu argued that identity reflects social structures and cultural capital (e.g., education, class, and taste).
To summarise what shapes Identification:
· Social and familial relationships (Freud, Erikson).
· Historical and cultural contexts (Stuart Hall).
· Intersectionality - how race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect (Butler).
· Media and representation (Hall, Butler).
· Power dynamics and access to cultural capital (Bourdieu).
How does food shape identity?
I can assume that food is deeply tied to personal, cultural, and national identity, reflecting geography, history, and social customs.
А French anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss whose work was important in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology explored the cultural symbolism of food and the "raw vs. cooked" dichotomy.
“The opposition which we have noted in Melanesia and South America between cooked food and raw food (like the concomitant opposition between marriage and celibacy) implies the same type of asymmetry between state and process, stability and change, identity and transformation.” (Lévi-Strauss, 1963, p.153)
Lévi-Strauss argues that food preparation and culinary practices symbolize cultural structures and the transition from nature to culture.
Professor Sidney Mintz analysed the historical and economic significance of food, particularly sugar in his 1985 book, “Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.”
“In his view, that hunger shaped empires, spawned industrial-like plantations in the Caribbean and South America that presaged capitalism and globalization, enslaved and decimated indigenous populations, and engendered navies to protect trade while providing a sweetener to the wealthy and a cheap source of energy to industrial workers.
“There was no conspiracy at work to wreck the nutrition of the British working class, to turn them into addicts or to ruin their teeth,” Professor Mintz wrote in “Sweetness and Power.” “But the ever-rising consumption of sugar was an artifact of intraclass struggles for profit — struggles that eventuated in a world-market solution for drug foods, as industrial capitalism cut its protectionist losses and expanded a mass market to satisfy proletarian consumers once regarded as sinful or indolent.”
He added, “No wonder the rich and powerful liked it so much, and no wonder the poor learned to love it.” Sidney Mintz, Father of Food Anthropology, Dies at 93 The New York Times [online] At: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/us/sidney-mintz-father-of-food-anthropology-dies-at-93.html (Accessed 15.01.2025)
Basically, Sidney Mintz demonstrated how food connects global trade, colonialism, and cultural identity.
The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, already marked above, connected food preferences to cultural capital and class distinctions. He argued that taste is a marker of identity shaped by upbringing and education.
Carolyn Korsmeyer in her book Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy examines how food contributes to sensory experiences and meaning.
“So is food an art form? This does not seem to me to be the crucial question, though the commonalities between food and art are centrally Significant for understanding what food is in its own right. Certainly food does not qualify as a fine art; it does not have the right history, to make a complex point in shorthand. Culinary art can still be considered a minor or a decorative art, or perhaps a functional or applied art (for we should not minimize the fact that eating is a daily aspect of living in the most literal sense of that term) . ...
An important part of eating, drinking, and tasting is precisely that they signify the bodily, the mortal part of existence. There is only a superficial irony in this claim: part of the importance of food, eating, and awareness of tasting, swallowing, digesting is that they do direct attention to the upposedly "lower" aspect of being human-the fact that we are animal and mortal.
Food invites such a variety of
symbolic attachments that it may be employed to suggest opposite traits of fictional characters: Eating can signal gross indulgence and moral laxity or lusty participation
in life's offerings. Attention to taste may indicate refinement of perception or silly preoccupation with superficial pleasures. Ascetic refusal can betoken lofty moral
ideas and fine character, timid withdrawal and aversion to bodily needs, or religious extremism. The preparation and offering of food in gestures of hospitality may be
manipulative, reluctant, generous, careless, or dangerous. Narratives may detail how food nourishes, heals, and comforts or how it dupes, poisons, or addicts. Food can be an offering to friends and an invitation to conviviality and conversation; or, as in the famous case of Plato's Symposium, food and drink may be those elements that must be withheld from the body to keep the mind in higher tune.” (Korsmeyer, 2015, p. 144, p.185)
Korsmeyer connects food practices to aesthetics, memory, and belonging.
Anthropologist David Sutton focus on food and memory - how eating and cooking evoke personal and collective memories, shaping identity and nostalgia.
“Sutton draws out several important dimensions of the connection between food and memory. Food has "structure" in both quotidian and ritual contexts-across days, weeks, and years-which facilitates remembering. On Kalymnos, food is linked to the agricultural cycle, the male migration cycle, and the religious cycle (pp. 28-29). The structure and repetition of meals aid in remembering the past and contribute to what Sutton calls "prospective memory, i.e., the idea that Kalymnians plan in the present to remember food events in the future" (p. 19). He argues that food memories constitute a "form of historical consciousness" (p. 26) and suggests "parallels between how food is remembered and how the past is remembered more generally (p. 103).” from Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory. David E. Sutton. New York: Berg Publishing, 2001 by Erika Bourguignon [online] At: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/jar.58.4.3630699 (Accessed 15.01.2025)
As I summarisation i can highlight main key findings on food and Identity:
· Geography and climate: Local ingredients shape regional cuisines (e.g., Mediterranean olive oil, Arctic fish).
· Cultural rituals: Food-related traditions (e.g., fasting, feasting) reinforce communal bonds.
·Migration: Globalization creates hybrid cuisines, blending traditions (e.g., Tex-Mex, ramen burgers).
· Social class: Access to certain foods reflects economic privilege (Bourdieu).
·Memory and belonging: Food connects individuals to their heritage and personal histories (Sutton).
By researching further I identified several artists and exhibitions with discuss identification and food.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
He creates relational art, such as serving food in gallery spaces, focusing on community and social interaction.
Subodh Gupta
“I initially used these objects primarily as embodiments of nostalgia, family, ritual and home. Then, I slowly began to see them as encompassing more poignant world issues, such as starvation, migration and environmental crises.” Subodh Gupta. Reinventing the Readymade: Subodh Gupta [online] At: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/jar.58.4.3630699 (Accessed 15.01.2025)
Gupta explores Indian identity through food-related imagery, using objects like tiffin boxes and cooking utensils to reflect cultural traditions.
Yoko Ono
Mend Piece: Invites participants to share tea and mend broken objects, emphasizing care, community, and ritual.
Lee Mingwei
Projects like The Dining Project involve sharing meals with strangers, exploring food as a medium for intimacy and dialogue.
Exhibitions:
Food: Bigger than the Plate (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2019): Explored the intersection of food, culture, and sustainability.
Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Smart Museum of Art, 2012): Focused on food as a medium for social engagement.
“Feast surveys this practice for the first time, presenting the work of more than thirty artists and artist groups who have transformed the shared meal into a compelling artistic medium. The exhibition examines the history of the artist-orchestrated meal, assessing its roots in early-twentieth century European avant-garde art, its development over the past decades within Western art, and its current global ubiquity.” Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art [online] At: https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/feast/ (Accessed 15.01.2025)
Bibliography and references
1. Hall, S. (1990). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 222-237). London: Lawrence & Wishart.
2. Butler. J., (1995) Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 5{2): 165-180,1995. Symposium on Sexuality/Sexualities. Melancholy Gender—Refused Identification. [online] At: https://web-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Butler_MelancholyGender.pdf (Accessed 14.01.2025)
3. Lévi-Strauss. C., (1963) Structural Anthropology. BASIC BOOKS, Inc., Publishers, New York [online] At: https://monoskop.org/images/e/e8/Levi-Strauss_Claude_Structural_Anthropology_1963.pdf (Accessed 14.01.2025)
4. Korsmeyer. C., (2015) Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Cornell University Press, Year: 2015
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