人文地理学视角下的国外饮食文化研究进展

随着人文地理学的文化转向,以及跨学科的研究趋势,有关饮食、饮食文化体系和饮食活动的研究成为了地理学的研究对象之一。人文地理学视角下国外饮食文化研究主要集中在饮食的象征意义、饮食的文化经济、饮食的文化政治以及饮食与认同的相关研究四个方面。而国外的饮食文化研究趋势主要表现在(1)强调饮食全球化和跨国现象及其带来的影响;(2)关注饮食的意义以及人、饮食、物质环境和社会之间关系的探讨;(3)从探讨饮食和饮食文化本身的地理学研究,转向对饮食空间问题的探讨。在此基础上,从人地关系、跨地方以及文化政治三个方面对人文地理学视角下国内饮食文化研究提出了展望。

PROGRESS IN THE FOREIGN GEOGRAPHICAL FOOD STUDIES

With the trend of ‘Cultural turn’ and inter-disciplinary, human geographers have turned their interests again to the material culture. Therefore, these years, as the important form of material things, food becomes one of the most significant objects in human geography research, especially in the western world. However, The senses of smell, touch, taste and hearing have been neglected as a consequence of the emphasis on ‘ways of seeing’, so that there are only three reviews on the topic about the geographies of food, and just few geographers are studying food both abroad and domestic. So, in this paper, we will focus on the themes and tendencies in the research about the geographies of food in the western discourse, in order to provide some new directions to the research on geographies of food in China. The results shows that, there are four main themes in the geographical food studies, those are:(1) the symbolic meanings of food;(2) the food economics;(3) the cultural politics behind food; and(4) the research links food and people's identities. And the three tendencies of western geographic food studies are:(1) emphasizing the globalization and international mobility, and their impacts on food meanings, food economics, food policies and people's identities from eating and preparing food;(2) focusing on the complicated meanings of food and the connection between people, food, physical settings and the society. That is to say, the geographers regard food as a kind of material culture, and explore the social and cultural meanings of food;(3) turning to explore the spatiality of eating and food cultures from discussing the regional diversities of food meanings.