Food for social change in Peru: Narrative and performance of the culinary nation

Abstract

This article discusses the most relevant scholarship produced on the rise of Peruvian cuisine and Peru’s gastro-politics. It focuses on the contexts, processes and protagonists behind the attempt to heal and re-found the nation through food after a period of decline and terror, and on the formulation of ideas of social change aimed at shaping and promoting Peru as an entrepreneurial, vigorous but also more equal and fairer society. It also considers the smaller societal changes that nurtured these ideas, which are varied in nature and scope. Methodologically, the article explores the semantics, practices and ideologies at stake as expressed in public discourse, media content, gastronomic trends and restaurant sourcing. By unfolding central processes of the culinary project: high-end cuisine, the refiguring of indigenous people as producers and the use of cultural identity as an authenticating force, it offers a critical reading of the so-called gastronomic revolution, highlighting the ways in which claims to unity and reconciliation, particularly in the incorporation of indigenous people and their food cultures, smooth over ongoing inequalities.