Foodscapes, Foodfields, and Identities in the YucatÁn / / Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Ayora-Diaz, Steffan Igor,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: CEDLA Latin America Studies ; 99
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (332 p.)

The state of Yucatán has its own distinct culinary tradition, and local people are constantly thinking and talking about food. They use it as a vehicle for social relations but also to distinguish themselves from “Mexicans.” This book examines the politics surrounding regional cuisine, as the author argues that Yucatecan gastronomy has been created and promoted in an effort to affirm the identity of a regional people and to oppose the hegemonic force of central Mexican cultural icons and forms. In particular, Yucatecan gastronomy counters the homogenizing drive of a national cuisine based on dominant central Mexican appetencies and defies the image of Mexican national cuisine as rooted in indigenous traditions. Drawing on post-structural and postcolonial theory, the author proposes that Yucatecan gastronomy - having successfully gained a reputation as distinct and distant from ‘Mexican’ cuisine - is a bifurcation from regional culinary practices. However, the author warns, this leads to a double, paradoxical situation that divides the nation: while a national cuisine attempts to silence regional cultural diversity, the fissures in the project of a homogeneous regional identity are revealed.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction Food and the Post-colonial Politics of Identity -- Chapter 1 The Story of Two Peoples: Mexican and Yucatecan Peoplehood -- Chapter 2 Mérida and the Contemporary Foodscape -- Chapter 3 The Yucatecan Culinary Field and the Naturalization of Taste -- Chapter 4 Cookbooks and the Gastronomic Field: From Minor to Major Codes (and Back) -- Chapter 5 The Gastronomic Field: Restaurants and the Institutionalization of Yucatecan Gastronomy -- Conclusion Food and Identities in Post-national Times -- Notes -- Glossary of Recipes -- Cookbook References -- References -- Index