smrti talks

Here is a discussion on Web Recipes. From “Food as a theme in Regional Websites”, Presented at Food: Representation, Ideology and Politics, Jadavpur University, Kolkatta, India. Now being rewritten for publication.

I look into the recipe sections and descriptions about food in regional websites as a way of defining the region. This enquiry is done in order to look into the virtual regional identity as well as to explore the global and regional interactions.

Websites, here specifically Kerala websites, deal with food in two ways. At one level, the content describing the culture of Kerala, makes it a special point to mention the culinary practices in the region and at another level, the interactive session of recipes offer space for reading as well as writing recipes for the visitors.

The content almost always identifies the cuisine of the dominant caste/class as the cultural characteristic of the region in terms of tradition and vegetarianism. On the other hand, the visitors contribute more cosmopolitan recipes, like non-vegetarian or even recipes of foreign food. The gendered identity that is revealed through this is also quite interesting. A juxtaposition of these static and dynamic features of the new media throws light into the multiple ways of imagining a culture.

Another point about the regional identity, is its gender. Surprisingly, the recipe sections do not come as part of womens corner. Popular understanding of cookery is that it is a female pursuit and that it is women’s responsibility to be concerned about food. There are many comments from male user names as well. The recipe sections in the websites in that sense, throws light into the changing, though minor changes, perceptions of gender roles.

Besides translating a regional identity, recipe sections also throws light into how the region handles globalization. Other than what is written in the content as the authentic Kerala menu, the recipe sections have non vegetarian dishes, beef specialities, Chinese and continental delicacies.

The nonlinearity of the medium helps in bringing in more details about the culinary practices of the region. Recipe sections are interactive spaces in the websites where the visitors can contribute. This gives a much more eclectic view of the tastes of the region. Juxtaposing these two textspaces in the same website gives a clue to what the region considers as part of its “culture” and what the region’s tastes are. We get two independent trends in the region. A regional identity is tried to be built around notions of hindu dominant habits, whereas the tastes reveal a global flavour. This, in an important way points to the selective construction of the regional identity. Not that one textspace betrays the other, but that both contain important trends in constructing a regional identity, through food: one that is for preserving the region as uncontaminated and another that reaches out to the globe.

The paper reads through textspaces related to food in Kerala websites. Their oppositional juxtaposition with each other is taken as a positive aspect of the new medium. The juxtaposition reveals the gendered identity of a keralite as well as changing expectations of gender roles. It is also used to trace out the encounter between the global and the regional. Regional websites, positioning themselves at the crossroads of the globe and the region attempts to negotiate between the two.