What do deep fried mars bars, cod, and Bulgarian yoghurt have in common? Each have become symbolic foods with specific connotations, located to a very specific place and country.
This book explores the role of food in society as a means of interrogating the concept of the nation-state and its sub-units, and reveals how the nation-state in its various disguises has been and is changing in response to accelerated globalisation. The chapters investigate various stages of national food: its birth, emergence, and decline, and why sometimes no national food emerges. By collecting and analysing a wide range of case studies from countries including Portugal, Mexico, the USA, Bulgaria, Scotland, and Israel, the book illustrates ways in which various social forces work together to shape social and political realities concerning food.
The contributors, hailing from anthropology, history, sociology and political science, investigate the significance of specific food cultures, cuisines, dishes, and ingredients, and their association with national identity. In so doing, it becomes clearer how these two things interact, and demonstrates the scope and direction of the current study of food and nationalism.

Atsuko Ichijo is Associate Professor of Politics, Kingston University, UK.

Venetia Johannes is Postdoctoral Research Associate at Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK.

Ronald Ranta is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Kingston University, UK.

Notes on contributors
Introduction
Venetia Johannes (University of Oxford, UK), Atsuko Ichijo (Kingston University, UK) and Ronald Ranta (Kingston University, UK)

Part One: The 'Template': The 'Orthodox' Emergence and Development of National Food
1. Salt Cod and the Making of a Portuguese National Cuisine
José Sobral (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
2. The Cookbook in Mexico: A Founding Document of the Modern Nation
Sarah Bak-Geller Corona (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico)
3. Potica: The Leavened Bread that Reinvented Slovenia
Ana Tominc (Queen Margaret University, UK) and Andreja Vezovnik (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
4. Bacillus Bulgaricus: The Breeding of National Pride
Nevena Nancheva (Kingston University, UK)
5. Food and Nationalism in an Independent Ghana
Brandi Simpson Miller (SOAS, UK)
Part Two: Contemporary Accounts of the Emergence and Development of National Food
6. 'Signifying poverty, class and nation through Scottish foods: From Haggis to Deep-Fried Mars Bars'
Joy Fraser (George Mason University, USA) and Christine Knight (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
7. Catalan Culinary Nationalism: A Contemporary Case study
Venetia Johannes (University of Oxford, UK)
8. National Cuisine and Regional Identities in Costa Rica
Mona Nikolic (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
9. Ethnicity, Class and Nation in the Chilean Cuisine
Isabel M. Aguilera Bornand (Tarapacá University, Chile)
Part Three: Critical Accounts of National Food
10. Does Israeli Food Exist? The Multifaceted and Complex Making of a National Food
Ronald Ranta (Kingston University, UK) and Claudia Raquel Prieto-Piastro (King's Colleage London, UK)
11. Obliterating or Reviving the Nonexisting nation
Liora Gvion (The Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel Aviv, Israel)
12. Nationalism, Culinary Coherence and the Case of the United States: An Empirical or Conceptual Problem?
Amy Trubek (University of Vermon, US)
13. The Canadian Cuisine Fallacy
Nicolas Fabien-Ouellet (University of Vermont, US)
14. 'They're Always Eating Cuy': Food Regionalism and Transnationalism in Ecuador and the Andes
Emma-Jayne Abbots, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK
Conclusion
Atsuko Ichijo (Kingston University, UK)
References
Index