Conflict Cuisines @ AU

I think Anita McBride pretty well captured the mood this morning when she said, "It's a great day for food."  Johanna Mendelson Forman, a scholar-in-residence at American, and her class put on a day-long conference on gastrodiplomacy, or "people-to-people eating."

The general aim of gastrodiplomacy is to establish common ground between groups, to use food and the practices surrounding it as insight into larger questions of culture, and to humanize the other through interaction with their cuisines and the people who make them.  It's about more than the food itself, but the ways in which food is prepared, served, and shared, as well as about the people making it, the ingredients they use, and the experiences they bring forward with food.  Food transcends language barriers, and the act of eating something which a stranger has served you requires trust and the willingness to transcend cultural barriers.

The event, called "Conflict Cuisines: The Kitchen as the New Venue for Foreign Policy," hosted several panels on the intersection of diplomacy, peacebuilding, culture, conflict, and food, as well as featuring a fantastic lunch composed of selections from displaced diaspora chefs in the DC area, tying the visceral act of eating to the ability to understand culture and come together.  There's apparently a running joke in DC that you can tell which countries we're at war with by looking at which new restaurants open in the city, but the joke has some element of truth.  Conflict displaces people, and many times those displaced need to use food as a means to make money, which panelist Manolia Charlotin noted about the role of immigrant street vendors in New York.

Overall, the themes of the day broke down into three categories: culinary diplomacy, food as a tool of war and peacebuilding, and the role of culinary tourism and nation-branding.  Stories were shared by panelists about their experiences with food as a uniting or dividing experience, and insights into the lives of others were highlighted.  The politics surrounding food, because food and the acquisition of food is political, as well as the history of food and the role that colonialism can play in food came up.

One of the most interesting things raised, for me, was the idea that the language of food and the language of diplomacy are extremely similar.  We talk about "breaking bread," "breaking the ice," and "getting people to the table," demonstrating the deep relationship that food has with sharing experiences and coming together.

The darker sides of conflict cuisines were raised as well: as the former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine noted, food is "at times, a weapon," used to further the aims of the powerful at the expense of those in need.  Access is not always even, and while Yael Luttwak talked about the promise of weight-loss groups in bringing women in conflict areas together, Kimberly Reed from the International Food Information Council discussed the question of food security as the world's population heads toward 9 million.  Questions of food imperialism, food authenticity, and undermining indigenous food practices were raised.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't talk a bit about the food: Syrian shawarma, Israeli chickpea salads, hummus (of questionable origin, which is apparently a hotly contested debate), Peruvian marinated chicken over rice, Vietnamese rice paper rolls, Salvadorian pupusas... I didn't love everything (in fact, I really need to lay off the chickpeas before I become an actual chickpea), but the pupusas were absolutely delicious, and the experience of eating food and interacting with those who made it and sharing insights with others (like the man behind me in line who had no idea what shawarma was) got to the heart of the importance of food as a shared experience.

Also, I took some pictures when I remembered to, so enjoy!