(Your)Singapore Food Festival: A Sapid Degustation of National Cuisine and Identity in Food Tourism

Abstract

Despite the discursive emergence of the cultural turn, food geographies remain focused on issues of localization, agricultural intensification and unequal networks of distribution. This thesis adds to the current literature by focusing on national cuisine and national identity in food tourism. Capitalizing on the rising popularity of food tourism, the Singapore Tourism Board has appropriated local food as the centerpiece of its strategy, tapping on its ethnic heritage and cultural pluralism to solidify its reputation as a gastronomic paradise. Contextualized in the Singapore Food Festival 2014 foodscape, this thesis highlights the fluid, variegated nature of national cuisine and its manifestation at multiple spatial scales – the body, (ethnic) community, urban foodscape, nation and global. Dissonant, reflexive interpretations of national identity between all structural actors involved are also explored. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates that successful food tourism is contingent on the congruency of tourist expectations and producer intentions; only when this is achieved can national cuisine be mobilized as a representative, effectual vehicle of national identity to food tourists.