Consensus and Confrontation in the "New Georgian Cuisine": Semiotic Analysis

Abstract

This dissertation concerns with semiotic changes in the culinary field in Georgia. Two cases are scrutinized. One of these cases is reformist food movement, "New Georgian cuisine". The second case revolves around discussions of phenomena of vegetarianism in Georgian media. Both cases are analyzed as instances of the hegemonic struggles taking place in the culinary field. The conceptual and normative framework of the study is the theory of cultural hegemony. This theory emphasizes the phenomena of struggles between various visions of social life. Each of these visions reflects the interests of a particular social group and coalition, assembled around this group.

Hegemonic struggles can be pervasive to every field of everyday life, including the area of eating. At least one of the parties involved in the hegemonic struggles represents itself as a progressive force. The "New Georgian Cuisine", discussed in this work, is an example of such "progressive" movement. Similar to other "progressive" movements, this movement faces a challenging task of combining popular cultural values with support for cultural innovations. As for vegetarianism, I am interested in the discursive struggles around the definition of this concept going on in media. In both cases, I am interested in strategies for combining old and new cultural values.

At the same time, I explore the factors that prevent certain groups from expressing their interests and from entering a productive confrontation with other groups. In "New Georgian cuisine" narratives, "old" and "new" cultural values are reconciled through popular historical myth. According to this myth, Georgian culture has always been characterized by innovation and openness towards foreign influences. In these narratives, familiar ethnocultural symbols are used for the sake of combining “old" and "new" values. The use of historical myth and ethnocultural symbols facilitates the positioning of the movement as

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