Tibetan Food(s) and Identity in a Global Context
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
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| Description | My current research deals with the cultural aspects of Tibetan foods and beverages since I argue that everyday foods illustrate cultural identity: Food(s) are vehicles for expressing culture. In course of my past project on the construction of the collective identity of the Tibeto-Mongol population in the contemporary Henan Mongol Autonomous County in Qinghai province, I have gained a lot of experiences in nomadic food culture and “traditional” cooking. I learned that traditional foods are connected to Tibetans’ socio-cultural, ecological, spiritual life, and health. And moreover, some foods are culturally important in various festivals and ceremonies. Subsequently, I have lately been discussing the use of ingredients in the various cuisines with a Swiss Tibetan chef de cuisine and started enhancing transdisciplinary dialogues on food culture(s) as many scholars have so far been occupied by analysis of specific aspects of a given food culture, but they failed to acknowledge the phenomenon of the effects of cultural transmission on the emergence and diffusion of innovation of semi-nomadic food(s) into the “sedentary” European culinary world. By discussing the role food and food-making play in identity shaping among the diasporic Tibetans in Switzerland and Austria, in this lecture, I examine how intergenerational and cultural differences in the diaspora can influence the “traditional” food(s). Moreover, I am investigating the adaption of ingredients, seasonings, as well as cooking techniques in the Tibetan cuisine. |