Cooking up the self

Bodil Stilling Blichfeldt, Marie Mikkelsen and Lisa Brønnum Andersen Cooking up the self. Food can be regarded as symbolic as well as a means of socializing. Furthermore, the media landscape is littered with cooking books and magazines, TV cooking programs, gastro blogs and websites, and a constantly increasing number of celebrity chefs. Giving voice to a series of consumers with a particular interest in food, this paper discusses symbolic and social dimensions of food that are central to these consumers. In particular, the interviewees point to food as an example of gift giving, caring, prestige and an important part of one’s ‘social self’. Moreover, the interviewees point to ‘gastro-porn’ as entertainment that allows for them to daydream about an ‘alternate self’. The paper elaborates on these issues and hereby points to food as imbedded in social webs and the constructions of meaningful selves.