Eating and Cultural Performance: Contemporary Community Lifestyle

Abstract

Eating and all that is associated with it, is already larger than life. Trying to understand eating behavior means also trying to understand or learning the values behind the behaviour. On the contrarary if we deeply think about eating and food it also triggering new values and knowledge about it. Insprired by Foucault, this paper shows that the meaning of eating and food is not only a fuel for the body, but also can have a relation with power and knowledge. Through power and knowledge, eating becomes a medium of contructions of the subject and a strategy in conducting relationship, in the sense that it regulates and shapes subject in its social life. Researchers focus on the existence of foreign culinary, in this case Japanese culinary culture. The results showed that eating Japanese food has formed a lifestyle, behavior patterns, a source of knowledge, beliefs, and values. Furthermore, the eating Japanese food becomes a media for cultural performances. Eating which has only been considered as consumptive behavior has changed into a creative energy that changes human civilization.