Ethnic Foodways or Ethnic Globalization Essay

Globalization has indeed been a global osmosis of culture that includes dress habits, language and food habits. The melting pot that is often used as an analogy for globalization best describes what happens when several different cultures meet. Each adds its own flavor to local culture and what results is an amalgam that includes elements from all contributing cultures. Globalization results in the movement of factors of production through capital transfers and labor migration. Migration gives rise to a transfer of cultural elements. What has been seen in the recent past is the fast paced globalization through the multi national firm. In the cultural context, this global mix has been seen in the migration of culture through large clothing chains, retail supermarkets and food products. Phillips (2006) talks of how the increase in labor mobility has helped cuisine and food transfer across borders. In the nineteenth century itself, the movement of indentured labor for work in plantations in the West Indies and the Pacific enabled the movement of food habits from Asia to North America. Even earlier it was African cuisine that had gained a foothold in the US. The multinational food chain now ensures that similar food is available in each of its outlets across the world. MacDonald’s USP is indeed that the Big Mac would taste the same in each of its 25000 locations across the world. However, with this standardization is also the need to cater to local markets and take advantage of the local raw material to satisfy local tastes. Sometimes large multinational food chains have to localize to be able to gain larger market shares and that is the reason. In other cases, local tradition dictates nutrients that restaurants may choose and may avoid. Hence the MacDonald outlet in the Middle East does not serve ham while it avoids beef in India. Therefore one can see that globalization results in a two way exchange of cultures by way of food habits and tastes.