Food Codes

Prepared with 50g of strawberries per 100g.

Total sugar content 60g per 100g.

Best before end: see side of lid.

Refrigerate after opening and consume within 3 weeks.

Paula Calleja Cardiel / 3342854401

This all began a mundane morning, in my mundane pyjamas, during a mundane breakfast in a mundane life.

4

I had a Hovis small wholemeal medium bread toast in front of my still blurry, rheumatic vision. I thoroughly spread some TESCO 250g unsalted British butter and proceeded to put some jam on top. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the day ahead of me. I reached for the Bonne Maman 370g strawberry conserve, forgot my trail of automated impulses, and stared blankly at it for a while. I might well have been meditating.

[previous page] fig. 1: Strawberry Jam

I became fascinated with a Bonne Maman jam jar because in its simplicity; its red-checkered lid and its handwritten font – Mistral to be exact, it embodied my imagination of a country I barely knew, France.

5

Unlike wine and other geographically and traditionally specific products, where you get a Denomination of Origin, this was a normal product, bought in a TESCO supermarket and not in a delicatessen, yet it strongly affiliated itself to another culture and stood differentiated from others. It said “I’m French you commoners, I’m l’art de vivre en Provence”.

Was this packaging device specific to that particular brand?

Well, St. Dalfour’s jams follow a similar strategy. And I don’t think that is mere happenstance.

Could I find, then, an equivalent in other products?

6

strawberry jam butter

fig, 2: A Morning Hovis Toast

wholemeal bread slice

7

fig. 3: Bonne Maman Strawberry Jam Jar / fig. 4: Bonne Maman, Product of France

8

This essay is a study on the cultural representations we find on the packaging of consumer goods, more specifically, edible supermarket goods. It aims to showcase how behind such banal products there are bigger cultural, ideological, apparatuses and a productive system of meanings and symbols; unpacking the different nodes of power involved in the network – from individual consumers and social classes to the state, the notions of myth and power.

Furthermore, a case is made here to consider supermarkets, regardless of size and target group, as an Althusserian Ideological State Apparatus where domination and the strategies of power are still in action but condensed to a symbolical commodification.

9

fig, 5: Collection of French products

The research intends to show how the skins of objects are charged with semiotic relevance and instruct a social identity subjected to both external othering processes and internal reaffirmation. Linked to this theoretical body are examples of artist’s and designer’s work relevant to the topics discussed, either through the nature of their practice or the outcomes themselves. In addition, I personally looked for primary, physical sources related to my areas of interest in different neighbourhoods in London, a variety of small, independent supermarkets and current consumer goods. In order to explore the importance of the studied goods’ physicality they were miniaturised and decontextualized. As a result, the miniatures construct a microcosm of commodities and commodified cultural meanings. This constituted the second half of the essay, the corresponding theoretical foundation on the meaning of miniatures and their possible reading as both toy and souvenir.

10

11

Methodology

fig. 6: France’s Current Affairs Collage

To approach this subject theoretically, I have relied greatly on Foucault’s methods, more specifically, his notions of Problematization and archaeology, to guide not only my direction when building the speculative, political base but also to help in breaking down the semiotics present in practical research. When we look at a country’s history solely based on its consumer goods, we can unpick not only the factual, historical events at the time but also the discursive mechanisms deployed to represent the ‘actors’ involved in such circumstances. I decided that if it is applicable to the past, it might as well be too to the present. Foucault defines Problematization in an interview with Francis Ewald – recollected

12

in The Concern for Truth in May 1984 – as follows: “Problematization doesn’t mean representation of a pre-existing object, nor the creation by discourse of an object that doesn’t exist. It is the totality of discursive and non-discursive practices that introduces something into the play of true and false and constitutes it as an object of thought (whether in the form of moral reflection, scientific knowledge, political analysis, etc.)”.

Foucault, M. (1990). Politics, Philosophy,Culture: Interviews and Other Writings of Michel Foucault 1977 - 1984. (L. D. Kritzman, Ed.) (1st ed.).

London: Routledge Ltd.

In regards to Foucaultian archaeology, I would not consider my process an extensive archaeological analysis in the proper sense of the term, focusing more on the sign language, spatial locations, routes and rescaling of consumer goods. What I wanted to take from the archaeological method was the questioning of the systems of determined social plans or contexts and the ‘actors’ and ‘props’ at play and what is communicated (in oral, written or iconic form). “Discourse is not only about language” (Kendall & Wickham, 1999) and

13

“in the conduct of an archaeology, one finds out something about the visible in ‘opening up’ statements and something about the statement in ‘opening up visibilities’” (Kendall & Wickham, 1999).

The argumentative foundation is primarily shaped by: the readings of post-Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (notions of Ideological State Apparatuses, ideology), Michel Foucault (notions of power, the dispositif, Problematization and archaeology), Pierre Bourdieu (notions of habitus, social class, culture and taste), Susan Stewart (notions of the miniature, the gigantic and the souvenir), Roland Barthes (notions of myth and culture), and Michael Pickering (Constructions of the Other, stereotyping and post-colonialism). The practical research follows a less restrictive, more winding course where the two focal points lay on 1) small, ‘ethnic’ supermarkets in London and 2) consumer goods.

I was inspired by Bourdieu’s use of photography to observe, and extract, societal meaning and Anastasia Vikhor-

14

15

nova’s process and advice, which I used as references for my explorations. Vikhornova suggested during a personal Skype call the 8th of December 2017, that “photography is important to understand the language and the world within the space you are studying and how it is constructed”.

I employed as well as the Situationist technique of the dérive when it came to spatial explorations across London.

To reflect the different, but technically similar, cultural mechanisms that manipulate consumer goods, it was more appropriate to look for urban manifestations of established immigrant groups. Small, ‘ethnically outstanding’ supermarkets were more relevant, interesting spaces than big, national brands like TESCO, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose or Lidl – which I chose not to research. In addition, I stayed away from high-end specialty stores and delicatessen shops because they divert away from the mode of consumption I had established as a basis and follow a different protocol and marketing procedure in their product selection.

16

fig. 7: French Specific Products / fig. 8: Couscous and Tabouleh Boxes / fig. 9: Indian Specific Products

On the other hand, was the purchase of a series of consumer goods – couscous boxes being a common denominator but not the sole ‘specimen’ – followed by their later scanning, analysis, miniaturisation and, due to practical reasons external to this document, consumption. This unexpected yet necessary side effect encompassed what was studied about habitus, preferences, cosmopolitanism and life style’s practical plasticity. I found myself eating a series of dishes that I, either had not eaten before, or never thought of preparing in the first place.

Alongside the miniaturisation process, I deemed necessary, if only for the sake of thoroughness, to ‘map out’ the packaging’s visual resources of each purchased product.

17

18

19

Last, but not least, to establish a more honest and meticulous procedure, one has to consider his own biases, and locate oneself in the same parameters and categories we use on others. Therefore, I listed those ‘attributes’ and ‘circumstances’ that, consciously or not, have shaped me, my habitus, and may continue to do so:

fig. 10: La dérive: Discours sur les passions de l’amour

20

· White, European, from a Spanish background, born in Barcelona and raised in Madrid. · 20 years old (at the time of writing), born in 1996, cis-female. · High middle class, no remarkable economic hardships, nor excesses*. · Living in a municipality north of the capital of barely 7000 inhabitants during her childhood and adolescence. · No religious affiliation, would self-describe as atheist or agnostic. · Instead of choosing “Catechism and Catholicism” as a graded, school subject, got an education in “Religions of the World” (Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism) for eight years. · Private schooling, national and international baccalaureate curricula and accessed higher education. · Voluntary ‘expatriation’ or migration, for academic and professional reasons. · Migration to another European country, having already mastered the language. · Learning a third language, French, out of interest rather than necessity.

21

· Most holiday destinations have been within Spain or in nearby European countries (Portugal, Italy). · Mediterranean food habits. · Due to father’s job, exposed to a wide array of foreign cuisines from a very young age. · Raised in a progressive*, slightly leftist* political environment. · A bookish family environment, keen on promoting an interest in ‘culture’: the arts, music, theatre, cinema, historical heritage, artisanship…etc. · Emphasis on sustainability and shopping responsibly (‘according to the seasons’). · 1 – 2 hrs of television in Spain, no television in the UK. 3 hrs approximately of social media - has a phone as if it may well be a botijo (earthenware pitcher).

(*): There may be a value bias in these statements that I am not aware of. In itself would lay the demonstration of my own, ‘trained’, perception of different social, political and economic spectrums according to the social, cultural, class I was born into.

Individuals

24

The objects that reveal most about our identities, how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen, are “the ones where we have a lot of choice” (Gosling, 2017).

However, we don’t swim in a vast sea of options unprepared, we jump – or we could arguably say, we are thrown – into the waters already trained, preconditioned to favour some options over others. This disciplining begins from childhood, guided by our parents at home, and extends to school education and other public institutions or apparatuses1, with the aim of gradually incorporating ourselves into society according to our respective, social class. Thus, our knowledge and experience of social practices (like food, dress, speech, leisure…etc.) comes “first from home, whose memory is later perpetuated, contested, and negotiated in different ways” (Rabikowska, 2010). The material conditions we were born into are practically imbued into us and construct what Bourdieu would define as habitus, “a collective schemata of experience and perception that establishes a framework for making sense of social experience” (Debevec & Ti-

Borrowed from Foucault’s concept of the dispositif, generally used to “indicate the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures, which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body” (O’Farrell, 1997).

1

25

[chapter page] fig. 11: The exotic land, women and architecture.

vadar, 2006). Habitus dictates preference, consciously or not, and can be adaptable, especially for practical reasons. Canteen: A Building Site Cookbook by Neville Gabie reflected the diverse, multicultural workforce that worked on site in the planning and building of Cabot Circus, in Bristol, through their favourite meals – always linked to their origins and felt ethnicity. The project is a heartfelt demonstration on how food is crucially important in constructing, and keeping our identities, as well as communicating who we are to others, with whom we share ‘a part of ourselves’. Food is, after all, “the object of the most symbolic of trades” (Barthes, 1997) and the recipes, with their ‘know-how’ and utensils, ensure the survival and repetition of the cultural rituals on which home is built upon.

Through habitus, individuals develop a ‘sense of one’s place’, an acquiescence towards class hierarchy, and progressively comply with a predetermined social order. Power is ideologically and allegorically generated across the social body, in the different social and institutional fields

26

and the ‘doxa’ – unquestioned assumptions or ‘common sense’ – behind the distinctions we make. Every national dispositif, with both Repressive and Ideological State Apparatuses, works with a series of categories and class fractions to which the subjects, and the apparatuses themselves, are accustomed. It is only when the individuals are uprooted from their endemic ideological cradle, that they contemplate their habitus, and resulting life-style(s)2, from a different perspective, as they are now subject to the scrutinising gaze of a different state dispositif and a culture that doesn’t recognise them. “An emigrant, after being relocated from the national/homely environment, realises that now he or she is recognised according to some other categories which were not considered before” (Rabikowska, 2010).

2 According to Bourdieu’s definition, life-styles are “the systematic products of habitus, which perceived in their mutual relations through the schemes of the habitus, become sign systems that are socially qualified” (Bourdieu, 1984).

27

Sam Gosling comments on his own personal experience in Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (p.67): “I am English, but this had never been a central component to how I saw myself until I moved to the United States, where my Englishness suddenly became much more salient. My accent stands out much more (…) and in the eyes of others (and hence myself), I have become the ambassador of all things English”.

The public cultural apparatuses might offer two possible options to the individual; the first would be to ‘adapt’ to the local cultural categories or domains of reference, the second, to ‘insist’ on its cultural particularities, and therefore be subjected to an othering process. The host dispositif “expects migrants to be differentiable and to behave in a certain way and thus (re)produce their own vision of their ethnic identity” (Rabikowska, 2010). One such way is through the translation of familiar – culturally defined, ‘ethnic’ to the surveying nation-state – objects into the new environment. “Saturation of everyday life practices with national markers facilitates the process of continu-

28

ity and enables the state of normalcy in a (re)created home” (Rabikowska, 2010).

However, this archetypal accentuation, if adeptly used, can also become a “liberation from the same paradigms” (Rabikowska, 2010). Individuals may use products, and subscribe to different social practices (life-styles), to switch identities and mutate their habitus “as they negotiate relations between home and host cultures” (Oswald, 1999). In globalised, market societies, people have a relatively easy access to a wide array of multicultural products in their daily lives, covering both physical and digital spaces and modes of exchange.

29

fig. 12: Canteen: A Building Site Cookbook

However, instead of homogenising cultural differences, “people may create cultural products that embody their cultural values, select own-culture products over other-culture ones depending on their identification with a given culture, and transmit them to others” (Ishii, Miyamoto, O. Rule, & Toriyama, 2014). “Ethnic consumers ‘swap cultures’ by swapping goods, moving between multiple worlds rather than blending these worlds into a single homogeneous identity” (Oswald, 1999).

Subjects, and classes by extension, actively cultivate and fortify the cultural discourse(s) and the apparatuses that exert it (them).

Social Class

Persons don’t engage with cultural apparatuses at individual, face value. Within their own habitus it is concealed an inbred sense of class and affiliation to one’s own group; which act as differentiating filters and criteria between people and the dispositifs, as well as, individuals – social classes. By classic Marxist definition, a social class is mainly defined by its position in relation to the forms of production and economic capital. However, Bourdieu expands on this by specifying that classes are also determined by geographical distribution – with the accompanying social implications –, sex ratio and other supplementary conditions like ethnic origin and sex, “which may function, in the form of tacit requirement, as real principles of selection or exclusion without ever being

[chapter page] fig. 13: A red checkered tablecloth and Mistral font butter cookies

32

33

formally stated” (Bourdieu, 1984). Class is decisive, and inescapable, in the formation of the habitus because the very same components that identify it are the de facto foundation of the disciplining with which the individual will be familiarised.

Furthermore, classes arise from a network of relationships, or ´fields´3, that ranges from where to study, musical interests and eating habits, to preferred sports and holiday destinations.

In the tension between social classes, among and within the various fields, we find issues of hegemony and resistance, issues of power and domination.

The parts that constitute the social body ascertain themselves by differentiation, which modern consumer societies conform to comparison, then competi-

Bourdieu coined the term ‘fields’ (champs in French) to refer to the “the dynamic configurations of classes or social relationships where groups meet and exchange, and assemble a hierarchical order between those in hold of power and those who aspire to attain it” (G. I. BioPsiA, 2017). Examples of this could be the ‘academic field’, the ‘juridical field’, the ‘journalistic field’ or the ‘scientific field’.

3

34

tion, and the safeguarding of the whole ensemble. We understand then that “every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces; it must therefore reproduce 1) the productive forces, and 2) the existing relations of production” (Althusser, 2008). The State as a cultural planning apparatus will structurally ensure the management and manufacture of the ‘sets of meanings’ that categorise each class, and which the classes themselves will embody, creating a big, self-dependant and self-reliant feedback system. These ‘sets of meanings’, or mental categories, qualify the dominating over the dominated. They inadvertently condition the life-styles of the dominated classes to “imply a form of recognition of the dominant values” (Bourdieu, 1984) at the same time that they mould the powerful to their role, which in turn “implies a form of acceptance of domination” (Bourdieu, 1984).

35

As stated by Galvin Kendall and Gary Wickham in Using Foucault’s Methods in the Introducing Qualitative Methods series: “The powerful help stuck the Culture-Meaning-Bank with those meanings that suit them, while the powerless have no choice but to withdraw these meanings and eventually come to accept them as their own”.

When we look specifically at ethnic differentiation, this pigeonholing might take place masked as a seemingly positive and empowering idea known as ‘cultural diversity’, where the individual is second to the ‘rich’, ethnic community. Jonathan Meades – on the first episode of the BBC series On France, A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries – describes the British approach to ‘vibrant cultural diversity’4 as a form of apartheid, where “people are

4 To an extent, all social classes correspond to an English and/or British national identity, “though the two remain ethnically distinct and view their Englishness and Britishness somewhat differently” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014). I would argue that, in practice, the former two remain second to their collective ethnic identity (community) since “few minorities in England describe their national identity as English” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014).

36

defined by the religious or ethnic or linguistic group they are born into, rather by the individual” (Niel, 2012a). He assures that “in Britain, what is recklessly celebrated as cultural diversity is actually a barrier to self-invention, an inhibitor to social mobility that stalls economic improvement and fractures society” (Niel, 2012a). The classified individual may aspire to become a meaning-producer, rather than a borrower, by riding himself of the symbolical attributes that tie him to his ‘original’ class. The injunction to become common by adopting the dominant norms to ‘resemble’, and finally to ‘disappear’, is the underside of any desire to an integral access and exercise of political, cultural power.

fig. 14: Brutalist social housing in a Parisian banlieue

37

38

Taza Kebab

fig. 15: Small and big business

Sai News

Al Mustafa Supermarket

TESCO Metro

39

As commented by Pascal Blanchard in La fracture coloniale (p.243): “But we know that this work of invisibilisation is an endless race, because the norm escapes when the outsiders get closer, the signs of distinction being recomposed to retrace the border and maintain the privileges of domination”. [« Mais nous savons que ce travail d’invisibilisation est une course sans fin, car la norme se dérobe lorsque les outsiders s’en rapprochent, les signes de distinction se recomposant pour retracer la frontière et maintenir les privilèges de la domination »].

Apparatuses The State & The Supermarket

If we follow classic Marxist theory, the dominant classes perpetuate a favourable ‘meaning’ production by exercising State power and, simultaneously, using the State apparatus as a tool for their own class objectives. The national apparatus is inherently repressive, that is, functions by and through violence. Althusserian theory refines this by making a distinction between the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA), which “contains the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc. and functions by violence – at least ultimately –” (Althusser, 2008), and the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA). Althusser calls Ideological State Apparatuses “a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialised institutions, which function by ‘ideology’” (Althusser, 2008) and support the classes holding power. Examples of ISAs would be schools, families, churches, political parties, trade unions, the mass media (radio, television, and press), the arts…etc.

[previous page] fig. 16: A mosque and a palm tree

42

43

“Ideological State Apparatuses also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is much attenuated and concealed, even symbolic5” (Althusser, 2008). While the Repressive State Apparatus acts visibly as a coherent whole on the social body, and thus “belongs entirely to the public domain” (Althusser, 2008), the Ideological State Apparatuses are numerous, varied in nature, and exert power separately; making them “part of the private domain” (Althusser, 2008). “The engineering of consent in capitalist society is still largely an unofficial private enterprise” (Abrams, 1988), and acts as an encirclement tactic that ensures approval; the difference being that, rather than a unique, identifiable, towering body, we are faced with multiple, mutable and subordinate ‘lackeys’.

In order to hold power and legitimise their practice, these apparatuses “need to be considered as productive networks that traverse and generate things, induce pleasure, forms of knowledge and

The exercise of symbolic violence results in the mental structures, the forms of perception and thought by which the state machinery itself works and that will constitute the distinction between classes and the habitus. It also explains the “colonialist’s domination over the colonised; also that of men over women, the school over the student and the urban world over the rural” (G. I. BioPsiA, 2017).

5

44

See figures 17, 18, 19, 20 - References

45

46

produce discourse; much more than as negative instances whose sole function is to say no” (Foucault, 1991).

Philip Abram’s take on the state apparatus suggests that the dispositif is not the ‘truth’ hidden by political practice, but “is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is” (Abrams, 1988). “It gives an account of political institutions in terms of cohesion, purpose, independence, common interest and morality without necessarily telling us anything about the actual nature, meaning or functions of political institutions” (Abrams, 1988).

However, the superstructure conforms itself in a cyclical loop of power, cultural ideology and architectures of control that embraces both the obscuring and the obscured6.

Fernando Coronil’s rejects Abram’s premise and argues that “there is a two-way historical relationship between the practice of masking and the masking of practice” (Özyürek, 2004). Alternatively, as Bourdieu would put it, “systematicity is found in the opus operatum because it is in the modus operandi” (Bourdieu, 1984).

6

48

The Supermarket “More than 34 million twenty-foot shipping containers are carted around the world to ports situated in 200 countries, and 680 million containers are handled by ports worldwide each year”.

Boag, Z. (2017, November). Forever shopping. New Philosopher, (18), 12–13.

[previous page] fig. 21: Outer skins and signage / fig. 22: Great Nile on-site sketch

49

50

51

52

EDGWARE ROAD [route 1]

KINGS ROAD - HAMMERSMITH [route 11]

53

KINGS ROAD - HAMMERSMITH [route 11]

SPITALFIELDS [route 11]

54

Supermarkets are emphatic manifestations of capitalist, consumer societies and yet, they are greatly overlooked as Ideological State Apparatuses due to the combination of a bland functionality, the brevity of their actual use, their ubiquitousness and their intrinsic relationship with the vernacular, the consumable and the disposable. They are very effective cultural apparatuses because they have achieved a state of normalcy7 not only in regards to their workings but also as entities, or institutions, per se. “Their routinely forgotten existence is itself an indication that thinking nationally [culturally] has become dyed in the wool of common sense” (Pickering, 2001). In the majority of cases, “they attempt to appeal broadly to a large range of customers and are thus emblematic of banal consumption habits, as well as the increasing standardisation of their products reveals the mainstreaming of cultural consumption” (Maxwell & DeSoucey, 2016).

Because of normalisation, that is, the process by which certain actions and ideas are rendered ‘natural’ without questioning through repetition, ideology, education and other means.

7

55

Supermarkets are spaces of transience where the values of the state dispositif are put on display and the individuals, and by extension, the social classes, assert their life-styles, and the mental categories and principles that guide them. “Consumption is shaped, driven, and constrained at every point by cultural, ideological considerations” (McCracken, 1988).

[previous page] figures 23 - 34: Independent supermarkets across London, routes I & II

Small supermarkets of a specific ethnic origin, or classifier are predictable consequences of long-term based immigration. They partake in the system of cultural meaning production from an apparently, misleading, position of ‘authenticity’ and opposition to the ‘native-host’ state apparatus by cultivating the referents that shaped their life-styles back ‘home’ and makes them ‘who they are’. However, they actually are part of the ‘host’ ideological apparatuses in the representation of their ethnicity, their symbolical and social differentiation, and therefore, the justification for their com-

57

munity pigeonholing. “A class is defined as much by its being perceived [by other classes] as by its being, by its consumption” (Bourdieu, 1984), since it is through the materialisation of abstract values (cultural categories and habitus) into purchasable goods, that groups construct their identities and ‘know’8 themselves. Any supermarket, for that matter, is a domain of reference, a domain “established by the operation of particular forms of calculation and types of statement that organise the diverse spaces in which particular types of objects can appear” (Kendall & Wickham, 1999).

These supermarkets reveal a more down to earth picture of foreign immigration, settlement and representation, as well as, the geographical distribution of such communities throughout the urban whole.

Specific ethnic communities become an identifying factor of a particular area, like the Lebanese, Egyptian and Maghrebi communities around Edgware Road, or

“The consistency of such knowledge requires support from the myth of the origin, from a good genesis - where the concept of genesis is charged with taking charge of, and masking, a production or mutation - from all the indispensable abstractions and, above all, mediations” (“From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy,” 2015).

8

58

the Bangladeshi and Indian communities in Brick Lane and across East London9.

The size, location and supplying force of the supermarkets, whether on their own or as an aggregate, reflect the social weight and presence of any given cultural community and proportionately subject it to othering processes, which are part of the normalising tactics deployed by power. The integration of any ethnic social group “refers to the immersion of the minority in the politics, economy and mass culture of a nation” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014).

9 In the United Kingdom, “though ethnic minorities enter white areas as they become socially mobile, this is counteracted by white British movement away from diverse neighbourhoods; an unconscious behaviour that reproduces the established pattern of white Britons and minorities tending to inhabit ethnically dissimilar environments” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014).

59

[page 56] fig. 35: Lait de Coco or Núóc Côt Dúa / fig. 36: Sainsbury’s Local at Ladbroke Grove

60

61

62

[previous spread] fig. 37: Ladbroke Grove dérive / fig. 38: Hammersmith route / fig. 39: Continuing from Kings Road to Earl’s Court / fig. 40: Spitalfields dérive

63

Michael Pickering explains the possible systematic strategies in Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation (p.213): “Manoeuvres against othered individuals involve two alternative yet complementary strategies: either assimilating them, stripping away their strangehood till they become like ‘us’, and so similar and familiar; or excluding them, casting them out from the ‘limits of the orderly world’ in ghettoised spaces – the slum, the racially demarcated social quarter, the squatter camp, the Bantustan – and so placing them, under ‘the pressure of the modern order-building state’, in a state of suspended extinction”.

64

65

Consumer Goods

66

Individuals, and classes, in consumer societies substantially sustain – and might expand – their life-styles and notions of the self, through consumption and the meaning ingrained in consumer goods.

Without them, “modern societies would lose key instruments for the reproduction, representation, and manipulation of their culture” (McCracken, 1988). Goods inconspicuously materialise ideology and the power networks without risking discussion and rebuttal. They embody political practices and may be subjected to wider historical and international issues, like the conflictive politics of the Middle East in a simple milk carton as shown in Jeremy Hutchison’s Oslo project, back in 2010: [previous page] fig. 41: Gueess who? Clue: Naan Bread

“According to the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israeli milk may be sold in Palestine, but Palestinian milk cannot be sold in Israel. In this work, the explosive politics of the Middle East hinge around a

67

simple carton of milk. The tension of East Jerusalem transforms a symbol of maternal care into something highly toxic.”

Consumer goods, in all their semiotic freight, are ‘convincing’ as well as ‘descriptive’, they are the cogwheels of an ideological apparatus that, by making culture live in objects, “seeks to make it appear inevitable, as the only sensible terms in which anyone can constitute their world” (McCracken, 1988). Stand-alone products in general, though there may be exceptions, don’t open up easily to symbolic readings and other surgical, conceptual analyses but when set in relation to other products (of similar use/category) we start to perceive a form of commonality. “The meaning of a good is best (and sometimes only) communicated when this good is surrounded by a complement of goods that carry the same significance; they suggest a kind of harmony or consistency and therefore somehow ‘go together’” (McCracken,

68

1988). Furthermore, as put by Bourdieu in Distinction: A Social Critique on the Judgement of Taste:

fig. 42: Jeremy Hutchison’s Palestinian milk

“One only has to bear in mind that goods are converted into distinctive signs, which may be signs of distinction but also of vulgarity, as soon as they are perceived relationally, to see that the representation which individuals and group inevitably project through their practices and properties is an integral part of social reality”.

69

fig. 43: Al-Jebrini Fresh Milk / fig. 44: “It’s in Arabic” / fig. 45: “This is for Arabs...”

70

fig. 46: Alien jelly on the plate, tea and pastries

71

fig. 47: Madeleines in a sunny provenzal house with white, blond kids

73

After all, goods, and more specifically, food, convey our familiarities, aspirations, values, and if further observed, education, travelling scope and economic class. “Food can represent an icon10 since it constitutes an identity for the inhabitants of a region/nation, an icon to which they can identify as a common unifying trait” (Frochot, 2003). Specific dishes or ingredients become sturdy identity hooks, nurturing “the sense of collective self of groups and helping them differentiate from others” (Jansen, 2001). The level of familiarity with the productive culture, and more importantly, the linguistic proficiency of its language determine the ‘legibility’ of the semiotic visual cues of the object code.

Such is the case, for example, with couscous in Algeria and Morocco, “which survived the French cultural domination” (Jansen, 2001) and is considered “typically Algerian” (Jansen, 2001) or Moroccan.

10

74

[previous page] fig. 48: Conjuring the exotic taste of India

However, I would point out that even though written text can efficiently reveal the lurking discourse, for which a minimal linguistic competence is necessary, the ignorance of such language can prove advantageous when contemplating the symbols without the hindrance of words, unwittingly muted out. No matter how ordinary they might be, culture is a symbol-based mechanism and “the less we are side-tracked by vocabulary, the more deeply immersed we are in the sign language of an alien culture� (Niel, 2012b).

We are limited to interact physically with objects on a surface level, their virtues printed on their skin (packaging), a purely aesthetic experience where the appearance, rather than the content, is the message.

75

fig. 49: What’s this?

76

“Object-skins can be conceived as borders that signify use-value and exchangevalue, utility and fetishism, and can also be seen as signifiers of protection, desire, status, sensuality and deception” (Boradkar, 2010). When we take into consideration ethnicity, migration and the following import of foreign goods, “in global consumer cultures, the signs and symbols of ethnic difference have been commodified to the point that they are isolated from historical processes and social relations forming culture through time” (Oswald, 1999).

States interpret products “as manifestations of national ethos” (Daliot-Bul, 2009) and more often than not “resort to a familiar yet conservative self-exoticising discourse, portraying an attractive, yet evasive ahistorical cultural character” (Daliot-Bul, 2009). Thus, standardised consum-

77

er goods are traditional by nature, their cultural – ideological – referents static in time, and might refer to a homely sense of nostalgia for something we haven’t individually experienced, or that no longer corresponds to our present.

Purchasing, and employing, consumer goods is a performative demonstration of social contracts and traditions, which encompasses the continuity, abandonment and novelty of said rituals. This cyclical act of acquisition, of ‘choice’, both encourages and deflects change within social groups; it may offer the possibility of renewal and opposition to their corresponding cultural categorisation, as well as help the state apparatuses “incorporate these changes into the existing cultural framework and to diffuse their destabilising potential” (McCracken, 1988).

78

When it comes to othered social classes, and their ‘corresponding’ life-styles, we have to take into account the participation of the rest of the social (national) body in the consumption – and normalisation – of their gastronomical ethnicity. Posttraditional food tastes are characterised by their interest in “unknown foods and ethnic cuisines, experimentation in cooking and the importance of the communicative role of food consumption” (Debevec & Tivadar, 2006). This inclination is particularly fostered in big, modern, urban environments11 (like London) where there is a high level of contact and visibility of multiple ethnic groups, through supermarkets, fairs, restaurants, cafés…etc., which leads to a widespread cultural cosmopolitism. Jörg Rössel and Julia H. Schroedter define cosmopolitan cultural consumption by

If we take a few steps back and include the state’s, in this case the UK’s, past and current international connections, “Western Europe’s gastronomic cosmopolitanism is a product of historically-embedded markets (each respective country’s main source of post-colonial migration) and their unequally distributed cultural and economic resources” (Maxwell & DeSoucey, 2016).

11

79

its receptiveness, which is “first, a personality trait indicating openness to new experiences, imaginativeness, and joy in experimentation” (Rössel & H. Schroedter, 2015) and second, the possession of a “breadth of tastes, the tolerance for different genres” (Rössel & H. Schroedter, 2015). This makes cosmopolitan behaviours a clear attribute of individual habitus, much sought after and praised, however, we must consider the material and social factors12 that allow such preference in the first place. Cosmopolitan cultural consumption is a matter of class – of quite privileged classes (transnational connections, access to higher education, travel, ‘experimental’ leisure…etc.), and strategies of power.

There is no denying there is a “connection between certain forms of capital endowment and cosmopolitan cultural consumption” (Rössel & H. Schroedter, 2015).

Demos’ 2014 study on the “white, British response to immigration” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014), titled Changing places, revealed that “among whites and non-whites, those from upper-working class and lower-middle-class backgrounds tend to be most opposed to immigration; while Londoners, young people, the university educated and students are less opposed” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014). Ironically, though, the study also revealed that, regardless of ethnic origin, those living “in deprived wards want less immigration” (Kaufmann & Harris, 2014).

12

80

81

Cassoulet au Canard JerĂ´me buys this.

I buy this.

Le Supermarche [ Lancaster Gate]

Sake Nobu drinks this. fig. 50: A Spaniard buying a duck cassoulet / fig. 51: A Spaniard drinking Japanese sake

I drink this.

Rice Wine Shop [ Picadilly Circus ]

82

I think Laura R. Oswald poses a pertinent question for this section in her article Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle-Class Haitian Immigrants (Journal of Consumer Research, p. 303–318): “An individual consuming a cup of Turkish coffee with other Turkish immigrants is expressing ethnicity. But to what point does drinking Turkish coffee cease to be the direct expression of Turkish identity and become a symbol for exoticism, sophistication, or even alienation among Turks and non-Turks alike?”

83

[next spread] fig. 52: Merchant sailing boat, perfumed!

Culture, Ideology, Myth

86

First, an apparatus and its practice(s) always contains, and is defined by, an ideology, whose “existence is material” (Althusser, 2008), that is, is given ‘physical’ existence (and power) through the objects itself has generated. Althusser conceives ideology in a classical, Marxist, view as an “imaginary construction, a pure illusion, a dream” (Althusser, 2008), instead of representing a real network of relations, it stages “the system of imaginary relations of individuals to the real relations to which they live” (Althusser, 2008).

Ideology establishes a ‘vocabulary’, a series of meanings, biases and ‘know-hows’ that are particular to the society one lives in, and rule the individual’s existence.

Ideology conforms culture and culture, ultimately, “is itself an ideology” (Barthes, 1991). Foucault sees culture as the “site where hegemonic and resistant meanings ritually (and endlessly) do battle13” (Kendall & Wickham, 1999).

Bourdieu considers culture as a ‘crosier’ that assumes and requires everyone to take

This infinite tension is sustained by the distribution of power across the social body, which Foucault calls ‘micro-powers’, which are “subtlety exercised in institutions, productive spaces, political organisations, family ties and close attachments” (G. I. BioPsiA, 2017).

13

87

part in itself and be taken by it, or in other words, “and interest in culture, without which there is no race, no competition14, is produced by the very race and competition which it produces” (Bourdieu, 1984).

Ideology – culture – is a verbal, written, language and a pictorial one, the structuration of its message, its discourse.

There are no objects that “exist in a completely non-discursive realm” (Kendall & Wickham, 1999), or that are so nonsignificant that lack a political and historical subtext (which irreversibly ties them back to a culture). “Ideology is a system of representations, perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects, and they act functionally on men via a process that escapes them” (Althusser, 2010). When an object, by a series of reasons, starts condensing and superimposing an increasing amount of cultural connotations, it slowly undergoes a process of mystification. The object is then transformed into what Barthes calls a ‘myth’.

14 It is from this very conflict, where the opposition of authenticity and imitation, highbrow (dominant) and lowbrow (popularised) culture emerges.

88

In Mythologies, Barthes comments that a myth is “a system of communication conveyed by a discourse, and with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter” (Barthes, 1991). Grand monuments like the Eiffel Tower are myths, but so are toys, souvenirs, wine, milk, the Citroën DS 19, steak and chips (steak et frites) and Garbo’s face. The grand and the majestic do not only make up a culture’s Barthian mythology, but also the mass consumed, the banal, the gastronomical, and the broadcasted. Myth is, on one side, “a signifying practice (the semiological)” (Leak, 1994), and on the other, “the uses to which that signifying practice is put in our modern societies (the ideological)” (Leak, 1994).

The state, the nation, the homeland, also live in myth or are myths themselves.

Philip Abrams considered the state a myth, defining it as a “rendering of unobserved realities” (Abrams, 1988) that tries to settle

89

itself through a call to a ‘past’ or historical memory. Culture is deeply nostalgic; it talks about a collective memory, and in an immigrant’s case, a home far away, that is recalled15 in the norms, symbols and outer skins of supermarket consumer goods.

Susan Stewart in On Longing, understands nostalgia as a form of narrative that is always ideological, “the past it seeks has never existed except as narrative, and hence, always absent, that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack” (Stewart, 1993).

Culture is a mythological ensemble, but its use goes beyond the emotionally poignant, it requires sovereignty, continuity16 and differentiation. National myths are reproduced time and time again in film,

The survival of the past “in the form of a memory, is the whispered promise of its present” (Althusser, 2010).

15

For example, “in the context and effects of political diversification and the loss of old certainties, a recognisably ‘permanent’ France was nevertheless evoked by the press of the year 2000 as a vibrant and positive entity” (Kedward, 2006). There was an image (discursive) bombardment of ‘Frenchness’ and the representation of a national society “singular at its core and plural in its diversity” (Kedward, 2006).

A clearly political, reactive control strategy to ensure the protection of the myth of ‘France’ as a nation given the fragmentary conditions submerging it at the time.

16

90

fig. 53: From fish and chips to Moules et frites campaign

91

travel brochures and advertising, like the Eurostar’s campaign premise “From fish and chips to Moules et frites” (Frochot, 2003), and can also be used as a form of ‘soft’ power. This is the case with the ‘Japan Brand’17, “composed of Japanese content products (…) as well as Japanese products that combine ‘Japanese creativity and tradition’, such as food, fashion and regional brands” (Daliot-Bul, 2009). This in turn constructs an archetype of the array of values, principles and symbols one is to expect from a culture, the Japanese in this case, and the ethnicity attached to it.

Cultures, either for their own depiction or when subjected to an external gaze, “still produce archetypes today, albeit less explicitly, but more pernicious and more lasting” (Blanchard, Bancel, & Lemaire, 2017). Most representations of the Other, in regards to non-European states and their respective cultures, originated from 19th Century nationalisms “and the racialized images

“Associated with Japan’s popular culture, it is a national project incorporated in the Japanese Intellectual Property Strategy promoted by the state since 2002 whose aims are to increase the global demand for Japanese products overseas and to use them as a resource of symbolic power for inducing pro-Japanese sentiments” (Daliot-Bul, 2009).

17

92

fig. 54: Britain’s Favourite Indian Snacks! / fig. 55: Butter Chicken ready made sauce / fig. 56: Ready in just 2 minutes! / fig. 57: A tangy Punjabi delicacy

93

of other ethnicities, utilised in the popular fiction of empire” (Pickering, 2001). Past colonies from which, later on, would come a series of waves of immigration that would install those ‘others’, ‘them’, in the land of ‘us’18. We should consider that, even in the most multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ of contexts, “there is always a danger of discrimination going into the reverse: the racial/cultural majority remains invisible but is inferred from the quasi-hallucinatory visibility of the ‘false nationals’” (Pickering, 2001).

18 Consequently, when it comes to food or other gastronomical commodities, for example, we see different approaches in the UK and France. “In French supermarkets, the language of ‘authentic’ dishes is reserved only for French products, never for foreign products, while in UK supermarkets, the language of authenticity is occasionally used to describe foreign-origin ingredients or dishes (i.e. ‘authentic tasting lasagne’ or an ‘authentic Middle Eastern recipe’), but not for British-origin dishes” (Maxwell & DeSoucey, 2016).

The Miniature & The Souvenir

96

The functional legibility of consumer goods relates to their scale, which varies with weight, use and transportation, their shape and packaging by which we will identify the product in a supermarket. In order to render the apparatus’ and culture’s influences visible in our modes of consumption, a certain form of dysmorphia19 needs to take place, while retaining the identifiable integrity of the object in order to avoid veering excessively towards the absurd and the ridiculous. “Because fiction occurs in a world simultaneous to and ‘outside’ everyday life, it interrupts the narrativity [discourse], the linearity of that life” (Stewart, 1993).

Within the cultural dispositif, I see toys and souvenirs as similar agents to supermarket goods, but with a more visible link to myth and adaptability to fiction that could make

In a consumer, use-based society this exaggerated fiction would have to take place in relation to the human body to make sense.

19

97

fig. 59: Mini Zakia Couscous Fin box

[previous page] fig. 58: Zakia Couscous Fin box

98

a profitable crossover. If authority, belongs to the state and its institutions, fiction and exaggeration should “be socially placed within the domains of anti and nonauthority: the feminine, the childish, the mad and the senile” (Stewart, 1993).

While the gigantic is felt as imposed by a third other, the miniature inverts said relationship by ‘enlarging’ the body20 and placing us as the meaning-adjudicators over the diminutive. “The gigantic is appropriated by the state and its institutions and put on a parade with great seriousness, as a symbol of the abstract social formations making up life in the city” (Stewart, 1993).

We could consider the augmentation in scale as a satirical device to represent, to mimic, the power relations between com-

20 We can only interact partially with the gigantic, never in its completeness; ‘It’ always looking at us, within it, from above, while we take the miniature “as a spatial whole” (Stewart, 1993), at a glance, where “we can only stand outside, looking in” (Stewart, 1993).

99

fig. 60: Mini Ferrero Couscous box / fig. 61: Mini Bonne Maman galettes

100

modity and state. The sculptural practice of artist Elizabeth Wright comes to mind, where she has been exploring throughout her career the relationship between scale and our interaction with the banal, from miniature telephone directories to massive cigarette ends, Mini Escort’s and stolen bicycles. However, Susan Stewart argues that the gigantification of the commodity relations would mark the “magicalisation of the commodity, the final masking of the gigantic apparatus, which is the nature of class relations themselves” (Stewart, 1993).

Miniaturisation relegates the non-visual dimensions21 of the object (by mere physical reduction), and enhances our visual dependency and “the significance of the object within the system of signs” (Stewart, 1993) – that is, the culture/

21 Miniatures also elicit a series of affective responses from individuals, senses of privacy, intimacy, possession, mastery and control, and are mostly “non-conscious, as they are automatically triggered by the body’s interaction with scale” (Pietrobruno, 2011).

101

fig. 62: Elizabeth Wright’s bike enlarged to 135%.

102

fig. 63: Fischli & Weiss’ vernacular equilibre sculpture / fig. 64: Sculptural enlarged heels

103

ideology to which it ‘says’ it belongs.

If we acknowledge the performative nature of consumption, a simple grocery shopping or the ‘life’ of a supermarket in this case, we will be able to translate it to any depiction of such performance as well as its own ‘props’ - mundane goods. Peter Fischli and David Weiss’ work explores, in playful equilibrium, the versatility of ordinary objects, those we would find in any home, presenting them as balancers in dynamic sculptural relationships. They sometimes alter their scale, sometimes they don’t, but what does not vary is the formal, symbolic, as well as contextual richness – in fact decontextualized in their case by means of exaggeration and fantasy – which consumer goods possess. Thus, we perceive

104

fig. 65: Mini La Mosquera Couscous box / fig. 66: Mini Tipiak Couscous box

105

an inherent, “essential, theatricality in all miniatures” (Stewart, 1993) thanks to the simple act of, but not limited to, replicating, in smaller size, this fantastic quality.

Stewart would award miniaturisation two effects: “First, the object in its perfect stasis nevertheless suggests use, implementation, and contextualisation. And second, the representative quality of the miniature makes that contextualisation an allusive one; the miniature becomes a stage on which we project, by means of association or intertextuality, a deliberately framed series of actions.”

Stewart, S. (1993). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (New edition). Durham: Duke University Press

108

The Souvenir

[previous page] fig. 67: Miniatures and their originals on my kitchen counter.

The souvenir encapsulates the public, the grand and the historical by turning them into flat, twodimensional portrayals, or three-dimensional miniatures. David L. Hume describes souvenirs as “artefacts of cross-cultural exchange” (L. Hume, 2013), which in most cases are “born out of heritage” (L. Hume, 2013) and “are taken as the immutable symbols of the culture and place of its origin” (L. Hume, 2013). Consequently, souvenirs are canonical, traditional, and may arouse a nostalgic ache for the referred origin, its ‘homeland’, of which it provides a “false, simplified and generalised picture” (L. Hume, 2013). They communicate a per-

109

manent image of a culture, a symbolism that has withstood the test of time, and become purchasable substitutes of different ethnicities, religions and cultural groups. They would be ‘represented’ through a collection of fetishized, crafted objects and put on display, privately or not, estranging them from their original context.

The miniaturisation of ethnic consumer goods could set them in a souvenir-like mode of existence. It isn’t uncommon to see keychains, fridge magnets and other memorabilia recreating icons of mass consumption culture like Coca-Cola

110

fig. 68: Black cab keychain and others from a souvenir stand at Baker Street

bottles, Nutella jars, MacDonald’s fries, Lays chips, Cadbury’s chocolate bars and other generic goods. This is to highlight how both ends of culture’s ‘training’ spectrum, childhood (to-be citizens, persons), and ‘others’, tourists and other visitors, are related in the particularities of the miniature medium.

111

City of London

Westminster bridge

black cab

Big Ben

112

113

Semicolons and question marks There is something sadly nostalgic and detached in these particular, consumable forms of cultural ‘heritage’. They continuously talk about the past, installing or at least trying to - an idea of permanence, of timeless unity, which ‘lives on’ in the goods we buy, and the foods we cook. Things we have seen time and time again, in our childhood, and perhaps new ones we subscribe to later on, as adults, that confirm our habitudes, the image we have – and want to have – of ourselves and our memories of home. I admit to be guilty of such ‘consumer nostalgia’ whenever I go back to the United Kingdom from Madrid, finding myself packing up bottles of Carbonell olive oil, cans with ready-made

114

fabada, Cola Cao pots, and even more cans of chipirones en su tinta (squid in their ink), pulpo a la gallega (Galician octopus) and Sherry vinegar. They are not a family heirloom, a cherished piece of clothing or a friend’s gift, but they construct and maintain my identity to a similar degree. Homes are furbished differently in terms of furniture, and consumables.

Design generally looks at goods in aesthetic and functional terms rather than take into account their subjacent cultural, ideological, backgrounds. “An understanding of the politics of power, which is pivotal in cultural studies, can

115

inform designers of imperceptible social forces” (Boradkar, 2010) that guide, contest and evaluate the Design practice.

However, it’s not useful to simply track down the ‘decision-makers’ because “we will still not really know why and how the decision was made, how it came to be accepted by everybody, and how it is that it hurts a particular category of person” (Foucault, 1990). Designers are responsible of fashioning objects, enveloping them in outer-skins – potentially mythical or fetishist – that archive individual wishes, group identities and larger instructive systems. In an isolated culture, its self-characterization may not pose a problem, but nowadays, when multiple

116

symbolic and ritualistic systems cohabit and look at each other, we have to reflect on the exchange of images, of ‘self-portraits’, which takes place in the realms of consumption.

Should we insist on charging couscous boxes with culturally specific iconography?

(What exactly are we representing? Is it still pertinent?)

On the other hand, in face of an increasingly mixed, ‘migrant’ and multicultural reality, should we vacate object skins of all ‘ethnic’, ‘homely’ and ‘authentic’ discourses?

(Should we go back to Sainsbury’s modernist packaging designs of the 1960s? Isn’t that another form of imposition? Would we be homogenising then under Western schemas?). fig. 69: Modernist Sainsbury’s packaging designs

117

118

The problem with definite judgements or proposals, is that “as soon as one proposes, one proposes a vocabulary, an ideology, which can only have effects of domination” (Foucault, 1990), and in “what ‘must be’, to what ‘must take place’ – these effects of domination will return and we shall have other ideologies, functioning in the same way” (Foucault, 1990). What remains unchanged is the value of not taking for granted even the most mundane utterances of our societies, and the conventions we use, not only to depict ourselves, but to depict others as well. By concentrating on these vernacular objects, with different cultural niches and narratives, we are able to perceive how national, cultural design politics live within the bread and butter of everyday life and transform it into a modern ‘mythical’

119

depository. I don’ want to pass judgement on the use of bulbous domes as emblematic, or ‘quintessential’, icons to represent any Middle Eastern culture (more often than not grouped under the prejudice-prone and generalised term of ‘Arabic’) and promote in their stead a modernist, emptied, approach.

Nor it is about using different symbols, less known referents, to define culturally a product. Those questions are still valid, but forget to consider a priori the very material (symbols, pictures, images) they are handling. The question should be why are they quintessential in the first place? And why should they continue to be so?

120

The miniature represents, on one hand, the modern means of reproducibility and copy, that is, mass industrialisation, and on the other, the commodity as a sign, a condensed myth on the palm of our hands. It becomes an object to be looked at (souvenir), and an imitation used to mimic ‘cooking’, ‘shopping’, fill in ‘a kitchen’ or ‘a supermarket’ (toy). The reading of the miniature as souvenir ties with the vernacular, mass produced existence of the original materials, which are also portable, simplified and ultimately brought back home - though placed in different spaces within the house. However, to place them as ‘souvenirs’, under the same category as, for

121

example, a Sagrada Familia fridge magnet, a Pisa tower figurine or a Japanese uchiwa, may be seen as a ‘degrading’ of culture, its banalisation and its final transformation into a picturesque theme park. Miniatures could become just another form of exoticization.

A constant production of miniatures, from a certain amount onwards, can make the whole become a material22. Since the products were chosen because they belong to a larger idea, an inclination beyond the product per se, their combination could be considered a collection. I do not think the amount of miniatures, or cultural souvenirs, I have produced this far can be rigorously considered a ‘collection’ but it definitely is a potential one. This development would be accompanied with an interrogation of the

“Collectors create, combine, classify, and curate objects they acquire in such a way that a new product, the collection, emerges” (Boradkar, 2010).

22

122

value of such a collection, the nature of the imposed gaze, its consequences and even the characteristics and biases of the collector himself. The collecting process may reveal or create new meanings, or help to illustrate already existing ones, about either the individual parts or the overall collecting drive.

fig. 70: Mohalabia miniature vs original

124

125

Special acknowledgements to a deceased Bonne Maman 370g strawberry jam jar.

fig, 71: A Deceased Jam Jar

126

127

Bibliography

fig. 72: GarcĂ­a & Sons on-site sketch

128

Abrams, P. (1988). Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977). Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1), 59–89.

Althusser, L. (2008). On Ideology. London: Verso.

Althusser, L. (2010). For Marx (New edition). London: Verso.

Barthes, R. (1991). Mythologies. (A. Lavers, Trans.) (25th ed.). New York: The Noonday Press.

Barthes, R. (1997). The Eiffel Tower. In The Eiffel Tower and other mythologies (p. 151). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Blanchard, P., Bancel, N., & Lemaire, S. (2017). La fracture coloniale (5th ed.). Paris: La Découverte.

Boag, Z. (2017, November). Forever shopping.

New Philosopher, (18), 12–13.

Boradkar, P. (2010). Designing Things: A critical introduction to the culture of objects. Oxford: Berg.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (6th ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Daliot-Bul, M. (2009). Japan Brand Strategy: The Taming of “Cool Japan” and the Challenges of Cultural Planning in a Postmodern Age. Social Science Japan Journal, 12(2), 247–266.

129

Debevec, L., & Tivadar, B. (2006). Making connections through foodways: contemporary issues in anthropological and sociological studies of food. Anthropological Notebooks, 12(1), 5–16.

Fischli, P., & Weiss, D. (1984a). Quiet Afternoon [C-print, Sculpture]. Retrieved from http://www.matthewmarks. com/new-york/exhibitions/2007-04-27_peter-fischli-david-weiss/works-in-exhibition/#/images/2/ Fischli, P., & Weiss, D. (1984b). The Three Sisters [C-print, Sculpture]. Retrieved from http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/exhibitions/2007-04-27_peter-fischli-david-weiss/works-in-exhibition/#/images/8/ Foucault, M. (1990). Politics, Philosophy,Culture: Interviews and Other Writings of Michel Foucault 1977 - 1984. (L. D. Kritzman, Ed.) (1st ed.). London: Routledge Ltd. Foucault, M. (1991). The Foucault Reader. (P. Rabinow, Ed.). London: Penguin Books.

Frochot, I. (2003). An Analysis of Regional Positioning and Its Associated Food Images in French Tourism Regional Brochures. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, (14), 77–96.

From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy. (2015). In Reading Capital: The Complete Edition (p. 565). London: Verso.

130

G. I. BioPsiA. (2017). El Poder: Bourdieu y Foucault. Lenguaje: Barthes. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=BZTqp-Dq1lY&t=3s Gabie, N. (2008). Canteen: A building site cookbook [Book, Publication]. Retrieved from http://www.nevillegabie. com/works/bs1/canteen/ Gosling, S. (2008). Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (Reprint edition). New York: Basic Books.

Gosling, S. (2017). What your stuff says about you [New Philosopher Magazine Issue 18].

Hutchison, J. (2010). Oslo [Performance Video]. Jerusalem: Al-Mahatta Gallery. Retrieved from http://www. jeremyhutchison.com/work/project41.html Ishii, K., Miyamoto, Y., O. Rule, N., & Toriyama, R. (2014). Physical Objects as Vehicles of Cultural Transmission: Maintaining Harmony and Uniqueness Through Colored Geometric Patterns. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(2), 175–188.

Jansen, W. (2001). French Bread and Algerian Wine: Conflicting Identities in French Algeria. In P. Scholliers (Ed.), Food, Drink and Identity (1st ed., pp. 195–219). Oxford: Berg.

Kaufmann, E., & Harris, G. (2014). Changing places (1st ed.). London: Demos.

131

Kedward, R. (2006). La Vie en Bleu: France and the French since 1900. London: Penguin Books.

Kendall, G., & Wickham, G. (1999). Using Foucault’s Methods. London: Sage.

L. Hume, D. (2013). Tourism Art & Souvenirs: The Material Culture of Tourism (1st ed.). Routledge Ltd. Leak, A. (1994). Barthes, Mythologies. London: Grant & Cutler.

Maxwell, R., & DeSoucey, M. (2016). Gastronomic cosmopolitanism: Supermarket products in France and the United Kingdom. Poetics, (56), 85–97.

McCracken, G. (1988). Culture and Consumption: New approaches to the symbolic character of consumer goods and activities (15th ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Niel, T. (2012a, February 27). A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries [Documentary]. Jonathan Meades on France. France: BBC FOUR. Niel, T. (2012b, March 5). Just a Few Debts France Owes to America [Documentary]. Jonathan Meades on France.

France: BBC FOUR. O’Farrell, C. (1997, January). Michel Foucault. Retrieved December 2, 2017, from http://www.michel-foucault.com/ concepts/

132

133

Oswald, L. R. (1999). Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle-Class Haitian Immigrants. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(4), 303–318. Özyürek, E. (2004). Miniaturizing Atatürk: Privatization of State Imagery and Ideology in Turkey. American Ethnologist, 31(3), 374–391.

Pickering, M. (2001). Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation. New York: Palgrave.

Pietrobruno, S. (2011). Scale and the digital: The miniaturizing of global knowledge. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 15(2), 101–116.

Rabikowska, M. (2010). The ritualisation of food, home and national identity among Polish migrants in London. Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 16(3), 377–398.

Rössel, J., & H. Schroedter, J. (2015). Cosmopolitan cultural consumption: Preferences and practices in a heterogenous, urban population in Switzerland. Poetics, (50), 80–95. fig. 73: Le Supermarche on-site sketch

Scholliers, P. (2001). Meals, Food Narratives, and Sentiments of Belonging in Past and Present. In P. Scholliers (Ed.), Food, Drink and Identity (1st ed., pp. 3–23). Oxford: Berg.

134

135

Stewart, S. (1993). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (New edition).

Durham: Duke University Press.

Vikhornova, A. (2014). Meta-Devices [Plastic, electronic goods]. Retrieved from http://www.vikhornova.com/ meta-devices/ Vikhornova, A. (2017, August 12). Conversation on Meta-Devices project’s research process [Skype Video Call].

Wright, E. (1996). B.S.A. Tour of Britain Racer Enlarged to 135% [Sculpture: Steel, rubber and plastic]. Retrieved from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wright-b-s-a-tourof-britain-racer-enlarged-to-135-t07936 Wright, E. (2013). Pizza Delivery mped enlarged to 145% [Sculpture]. Retrieved from https://www.artfund.org/ what-to-see/exhibitions/2013/05/11/shortcuts-and-digressions-contemporary-sculpture-from-the-arts-council-collection-exhibition

fig. 74: Bangla Town on-site sketch

136

Image References Figure 1: Calleja, P. (2017). Strawberry Jam Close Up. [Photograph] Figure 2 : Calleja, P. (2017). Morning Toast.

[Photograph] Figure 3 : Calleja, P. (2017). Bonne Maman Strawberry Jam Jar. [Photograph] Figure 4 : Calleja, P. (2017). Produit de France.

[Photograph] Figure 5 : Calleja, P. (2017). Line up of French specific goods. [Photograph] Figure 6 : Calleja, P. (2017). France’s Current Affairs, studio workshop collage. [Scanned collage] Figure 7 : Calleja, P. (2017). Collection of French specific products. [Photograph] Figure 8 : Calleja, P. (2017). Collection of French couscous and tabouleh boxes. [Photograph]

137

Figure 9 : Calleja, P. (2017). Collection of Indian specific products. [Photograph] Figure 10: G.E. Debord (1957). Discours sur les passions de l’amour. [Image] Retrieved November 18, 2017 from: http://proyectoidis. org/teoria-de-la-deriva/ Courtesy of Greil Marcus.

Figure 11: Calleja, P. (2017). Ferrero Couscous Fin. [Scanned Image] Figure 12: Gabie, N. (2008). Canteen : A Building Site Cookbook. [Image] Retrieved December 8, 2017 from: http://www.nevillegabie.com/ works/bs1/canteen/ Figure 13: Calleja, P. (2017). Bonne Maman Galettes au Beurre Frais. [Scanned Image] Figure 14 : Kronental, L. (2015). Souvenir d’un Futur. [Image] Retrieved November, 18, 2017 from : https://www.laurentkronental.com/ Souvenir-d’un-Futur/12 Figure 15: Calleja, P. (2017). Small and big business in Church Street. [Photograph]

138

Figure 16: Calleja, P. (2017). Couscous Mediano La Mosquera. [Scanned Image] Figure 17: Bonnard, P. (1910). Les Fraises. [Image] Retrieved November 25, 2017 from : http://www.sothebys.com/en/ auctions/ecatalogue/2017/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-n09710/lot.12.html Figure 18: Bonne Maman (2018). Strawberry biscuit. [Image] Retrieved November 25, 2017 from: http://www.bonnemaman.us/about-us/ Figure 19: Service Plan (2016). Ils aiment.

[Image] Retrieved November 25, 2017 from: http://www.serviceplan.fr/fr/case-details/ bonne-maman.html Figure 20: Dufresne Corrigan Scarlett (2015).

J’aime, Tu aimes, Ils aiment. [Image] Retrieved November 25, 2017 from: https:// lareclame.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/bonnemaman-top.jpg Figure 21: Calleja, P. (2017). Packaging and Supermarket Signage Monochrome. [Collage]

139

Figure 22: Calleja, P. (2017). Great Nile Supermarket Sketch. [Drawing] Figure 23: Calleja, P. (2017). Nuts about Nuts.

[Photograph] Figure 24: Calleja, P. (2017). Sindbad Supermarket. [Photograph] Figure 25: Calleja, P. (2017). Al-Mustafa Supermarket. [Photograph] Figure 26: Calleja, P. (2017). Thai Smile Supermarket. [Photograph] Figure 27: Calleja, P. (2017). Saffaron Supermarket. [Photograph] Figure 28: Calleja, P. (2017). Zaman Brothers Cash & Carry. [Photograph] Figure 29: Calleja, P. (2017). Polish Deli.

[Photograph] Figure 30: Calleja, P. (2017). La Belle Boucherie.

[Photograph]

140

Figure 31: Calleja, P. (2017). Pinoy Supermarket.

[Photograph] Figure 32: Calleja, P. (2017). Bangla Town Cash & Carry. [Photograph] Figure 33: Calleja, P. (2017). Al-Manso Ori Supermarket. [Photograph] Figure 34: Calleja, P. (2017). Zam Zam Supermarket. [Photograph] Figure 35: Calleja, P. (2017). Coconut Milk at Pinoy Supermarket, Earls Court. [Photograph] Figure 36: Calleja, P. (2017). Ladbroke Grove’s Sainsbury’s Local. [Photograph] Figure 37: Google (2017). Ladbroke Grove map data. [Screenshot] Figure 38: Google (2017). Hammersmith map data.

[Screenshot] Figure 39: Google (2017). Earl’s Court map data.

[Screenshot]

141

Figure 40: Google (2017). Spitalfields map data.

[Screenshot] Figure 41: Calleja, P. (2017). Sharwoods Naan Bread. [Scanned Image] Figure 42: Hutchison, J. (2010). Oslo.

[Screenshot] Retrieved December 2, 2017 from : http://www.jeremyhutchison.com/work/ project41.html Figure 43: Hutchison, J. (2010). Oslo.

[Screenshot] Retrieved December 2, 2017 from : http://www.jeremyhutchison.com/work/ project41.html Figure 44: Hutchison, J. (2010). Oslo.

[Screenshot] Retrieved December 2, 2017 from : http://www.jeremyhutchison.com/work/ project41.html Figure 45: Hutchison, J. (2010). Oslo.

[Screenshot] Retrieved December 2, 2017 from : http://www.jeremyhutchison.com/work/ project41.html

142

Figure 46: TBWA/Brussels (2009). Another Planet. [Image] Retrieved November 25, 2017 from : http://tres9.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/ publicidad-eurostar-another-planet.html Figure 47: Service Plan (2016). Mamie Nova.

[Image] Retrieved November 25, 2017 from : https://lareclame.fr/serviceplan/realisations/ campagne-bonne-maman Figure 48: Calleja, P. (2017). East Indian Mulligatawny Cup Soup. [Scanned Image] Figure 49: Calleja, P. (2017). El Arosal Black Tea, product of Egypt. [Scanned Image] Figure 50: Calleja, P. (2017). La Belle Chaurienne Cassoulet au Canard.

[Photograph] Figure 51: Calleja, P. (2017). Japanese Sake.

[Photograph] Figure 52 : Calleja, P. (2017). Tipiak Couscous ParfumÊ aux Épices du Monde. [Scanned Image]

143

Figure 53 : Eurostar (2010). Attrapez le London Virus. [Image] Retrieved December 8, 2017 from : https://paletadelimon.wordpress.com/ tag/anuncios-publicitarios/ Figure 54: Calleja, P. (2017). Cofresh Bombay Mix. [Scanned Image] Figure 55: Calleja, P. (2017). Kohinoor Butter Chicken. [Scanned Image] Figure 56: Calleja, P. (2017). Kohinoor Dal Makhani. [Scanned Image] Figure 57: Calleja, P. (2017). Soul’s Punjabi Choley. [Scanned Image] Figure 58: Calleja, P. (2017). Zakia Couscous.

[Scanned Image] Figure 59: Calleja, P. (2017). Miniaturised Zakia Couscous Fin box. [Photograph] Figure 60: Calleja, P. (2017). Miniaturised Ferrero Couscous box. [Photograph]

144

Figure 61: Calleja, P. (2017). Miniaturised Bonne Maman galettes box. [Photograph] Figure 62: Wright, E. (1996). B.S.A. Tour of Britain Racer Enlarged to 135%. [Image] Retrieved December 11, from: http://www.tate. org.uk/art/artworks/wright-b-s-a-tour-of-britain-racer-enlarged-to-135-t07936 Figure 63: Fischli, P., & Weiss, D. (1984). Quiet Afternoon. [Image] Retrieved December 11, from: http://www.matthewmarks.com/newyork/exhibitions/2007-04-27_peter-fischli-david-weiss/works-in-exhibition/#/images/2/ Figure 64: Fischli, P., & Weiss, D. (1984). The Three Sisters. [Image] Retrieved December 11, from: http://www.matthewmarks.com/newyork/exhibitions/2007-04-27_peter-fischli-david-weiss/works-in-exhibition/#/images/8/ Figure 65: Calleja, P. (2017). Miniaturised La Mosquera Couscous mediano box.

[Photograph] Figure 66: Calleja, P. (2017). Miniaturised Tipiak Couscous ParfumĂŠ box. [Photograph]

145

Figure 67: Calleja, P. (2018). Miniatures and their originals. [Photograph] Figure 68: Calleja, P. (2017). Souvenir stand in Baker Street. [Photograph] Figure 69: Calleja, P. (2017). Sainsbury’s 1960s packaging. [Scanned collage] Figure 70: Calleja, P. (2017). Mohalabia Rice Pudding Dessert, miniature vs original.

[Photograph] Figure 71: Calleja, P. (2017). Deceased Strawberry Jam Jar. [Photograph] Figure 72: Calleja, P. (2017). GarcĂ­a & Sons Supermarket Sketch. [Drawing] Figure 73: Calleja, P. (2017). Le Supermarche Supermarket Sketch. [Drawing] Figure 74: Calleja, P. (2017). Bangla Town Supermarket Sketch. [Drawing]

146

Food Codes