Eating Identity: Theorizing the Everyday Foreign Policy Assemblage

Abstract

While everyday high-level practices have become an important area of study in foreign policy research, the every day of every (wo)man has been overlooked both in theoretical and empirical conceptualizations. Building on feminist, sociological, and ethnographic research, this article argues that everyday foreign policy is an assemblage—a combination of physical and cultural practices that inhabit digital and bodily spaces. Following the feminist call to liberate international relations from the straitjacket of high politics, this article aims to contextualize foreign policy within daily practices of regular citizens, who enact foreign policy at home, at the supermarket, and online. In effect, everyday foreign policy is not just about discussing identity, it is also about embodying and literally eating it. This article focuses on the grassroots of foreign policy sanctions in Russia in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea.