Exploring the Culinary Landscape : Visual, Digital, and Public Dimensions of Food Studies

The interdisciplinary methods of popular culture and food media studies examine how social class, cultural capital, and identity are contested in our daily life. This collection of essays on food representations in visual texts, digital platforms, and public domain politicises the culinary landscape, to make it more engaging and critical.

Food as a tangible construct could be appreciated in terms of its organoleptic aspects and also from the premise of social contexts, cultural systems and spaces as well. Kitchen, cooking utensils, and dining areas are not mere physical places but also the site of cultural production and exchange where meanings are invented and negotiated. Thus, food and its significance as both cultural artefact and a political space of discourse speak to multiple histories, identities, and social relations that compose this very essential element in the weave of human experience. This anthology of essays may broadly be classified under three heads; Food representations in Visual Media, Food and Digital Performance, and Food and the Public Spaces. Here we discuss essays on real culinary spaces and how they are translated into visual mediums like series or cinema. Digital media representations are also investigated where food vlogs and social media platforms are studied. It also deals with how the real spaces like restaurants and kitchen objects rearticulate one’s experience especially in a kitchen. The collection also contains auto-ethnographic essays on caste and religion.