Eating one’s own otherness: When producers commercialize their ethnicities

Maria Carolina Zanette, Eliane Pereira Zamith Brito, Isleide Arruda Fontenelle and Marina de Camargo Heck

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 129, issue C, 134-144

Abstract: Recently, several Brazilian chefs engaged in redefining the country’s cuisine by rediscovering its roots through the commercialization of Amazonian ingredients. These chefs, who belong to a dominant culture in Brazil, envisioned an ethnic cuisine based on elements denoting traces of authenticity—e.g., geographical origin—disregarding other aspects of the producers’ ethnicities. This scenario of ‘eating the Other’, a process through which difference is commercialized for the benefit of a dominant culture, imposes challenges to ethnic producers, who face a process of adjusting (or resisting) their forms of production. In this paper, we explore the conflicts endured by ethnic producers who have been Othered in the commercialization of their ethnicities. Our findings, emerging from a multi-method qualitative study, explore their reactions, which vary according to their level of compliance with the envisioned ethnic cuisine. We conclude by discussing the positions that ethnic producers can take in the commercialization of their ethnicities.

Keywords: Ethnicity; Commercialized ethnicities; Otherness; Dominance; Resistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:129:y:2021:i:c:p:134-144

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.02.057

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