Description
This project is a study of national identity movements (including as relates to colonial histories, immigration, and security), social and political behaviors and public opinion, and inter-disciplinarity. A goal is to illustrate identity, (non)belonging, and boundary drawing in the context of meaning making related to food: Its representation, production, and consumption. Engaging with the politics of food encourages an enlivened International Relations (IR) discipline that approaches global challenges such as political violence and security policy in a way that is attentive to wider audiences and resonance, creativity in methods, and responsibility in scholarship. Food sovereignty, the state, transnational food cultures, and claims of authenticity are interwoven with borders and associated boundary creation, activation, and challenge. Northern Ireland and Scotland encompass multiple co-existing identity claims through which a thoughtful attention to boundaries and borders connected with food, beverage, and consumption may help us to better understand complex security/insecurity dynamics, and why political violence in the name of protecting a particular “us” occurs in some areas but not others. This is particularly important given ongoing polarization within and between societal collectives, and ongoing responsibility to connect better understanding with security policies that mitigate challenges associated with violence and identity.
