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Edible communities: How Singapore creates a nation of consumers for consumption

Andrew Duffy https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6562-7379 [email protected] and Ginnette Ng Hui XianView all authors and affiliations

Volume 21, Issue 4

https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540519876003

Abstract
References
Biographies

Abstract

Scholars have noted the power of state-led discourse to create a national identity as an imagined community and have explicitly linked food to state-orchestrated narratives of nationhood. Others have described how a nation is constructed and maintained through everyday ‘banal nationalism’. This article combines the two to observe how state-led and everyday nationalisms are combined into a national promotional food narrative in order to attract travellers and the economic benefits they bring. Through thematic content analysis of all the food-related texts on the Singapore Tourism Board’s website this article uncovers dominant ideologies shaping tourism strategies aimed at driving consumption. Contrasting themes of heritage and innovation, unity and diversity, and local and international in food culture are presented to visitors, at the same time as defining the local people as consumers to further stimulate consumption. These findings drive analysis of how consumption may be depicted in a way that amounts to state-sponsored ingestion of a country and its people.

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Biographies

Andrew Duffy is an assistant professor at the Wee Kim Wee School at NTU. His research interests include mobilities in media, and the role of media in mobilities, with an emphasis on journalism, social media and travel.

Ginnette Ng Hui Xian is an undergraduate student in the Wee Kim Wee School.

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