textThis dissertation explores the deliberate symbolization of food as iconic of place
and community identity through consideration of food-themed place branding. When the
association between a place and a food item is abstracted and promoted, and the food
becomes emblematic of the place, the communal landscape becomes a foodscape. When
a locality stages a festive performance of its food-themed identity, it becomes a festive
foodscape. Drawing on ethnographic studies of the successful Gilroy (CA) Garlic
Festival and the failed Coppell (TX) PigFest, I demonstrate how image makers aim to
generate a sense of place and a sense of community by commodifying place and identity
through place-based food festivals. Cooking contests and other competitive festival
events provide affirmation of the food-place association. Locale aggrandizement, a
neolocalist impulse articulated through claims of “world” capitaldom and performed
through festivals, is an attempt to secure place differentiation through place branding.
Through case studies of cities that claim spinach and peach capitaldom, I demonstrate,
however, that the rhetoric of distinction can instead foster place brand similitude.
Incorporating the French concept terroir, which recognizes agricultural products as
unique to their specific geographic places of origin, into place branding rhetoric would
give expression to the food voice that constitutes foodscape. In becoming place-specific
symbolic and identity capital, food often is abstracted from its cycle of production, as
well as from its associations with particular ethnic foodways. As my discussion of
garlic’s transition from a food on the fringe of American foodways to a food fad evinces,
through the re-contextualization of place branding, a food can become suitable for
fetishization, iconization, and festivalization. The transactional character of food – its
multivalence and malleability as a symbol – makes it an attractive focus for image
makers charged with community building and place differentiation. Consumption of
place and consumption of identity are made palatable in a festive foodscape.American Studie
