Ronald Ranta
I am a senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at Kingston University. As a former chef, I am particularly interested in the sociological, political and international relations dimensions of food. I explore these through four main research areas: the relationship between food, national identity/nationalism and globalisation; food in the context of settler colonialism; British food policy post-Brexit; and food (in)security in the UK.
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Books
Table of contents (12 chapters)
Introduction
Alejandro Colás, Daniel Monterescu, Ronald Ranta
Pages 1-20
Part I. Beginnings: Hybrid Food Cultures and Foodways
Spanish Settlers and Andean Food Systems
Lisa Markowitz
Pages 23-46
What Belongs in the “Federal Diet”? Depictions of a National Cuisine in the Early American Republic
Peter Mabli
Pages 47-63
The Taste of Colonialism? Changing Norms of Rice Production and Consumption in Modern Taiwan
Yujen Chen
Pages 65-84
‘Like the Papacy of Mexican Cuisine’: Mayoras and Traditional Foods in Contemporary Mexico
Claudia Prieto-Piastro, Alejandro Colás
Pages 85-106
Part II. From Erasure to Decolonisation
Unsettling the History of Macadamia Nuts in Northern New South Wales
Adele Wessell Adele Wessell
Pages 109-126
Definitions of Hawaiian Food: Evidence of Settler Colonialism in Selected Cookbooks from the Hawaiian Islands (1896–2021)
Laura Kitchings
Pages 127-146
Decolonising Israeli Food? Between Culinary Appropriation and Recognition in Israel/Palestine
Ronald Ranta, Daniel Monterescu
Pages 147-171
‘Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown’: Lamb or Kangaroo, Which Should Reign Supreme? The Implications of Heroising a Settler Colonial Food Icon as National Identity
Jackie Newling
Pages 173-199
Part III. After Decolonisation?
“A Manly Amount of Wreckage”: South African Food Culture and Settler Belonging in Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative
Nitzan Tal
Pages 203-220
Sustaining the Memory of Colonial Algeria Through Food
Amy L. Hubbell, Jorien van Beukering
Pages 221-245
The Predicaments of Settler Gastrocolonialism
Lorenzo Veracini
Pages 247-259
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96268-5#toc
In this chapter, we argue that, starting with the Zionist establishment, then, after the establishment of the state, the Israeli government, tried to impose a new hegemonic food culture that rejected Jewish-diaspora food, and was grounded in modern concepts of nutrition, inspired by European food cultures, but based on local ingredients. in this new food culture, the differences between the various immigrant communities were expected to be less visible, and Arab-Palestinians invisible, at least on the plate. However, as we demonstrate through our analysis of cookbooks, culinary identities are hard to impose from the top-down. Israeli food history illustrates how attempts to impose from the top-down. Israeli food history illustrates how attempts to impose national food policies were negotiated and reinterpreted by those who were affected by them.
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 (including Portugal, Mexico, Slovenia, the USA, Ghana, Bulgaria, Scotland, Catalonia, Palestine, Costa Rica, Chile, Canada, Ecuador, 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.
Papers
responded and managed during the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach consists of three inter-related layers. A
qualitative description research approach based on naturalistic inquiry, supplemented by site visits and
personal observations was used.
Findings – The pandemic catalysed dramatic, often positive, changes to the provision of food aid, with a move
away from the traditional food bank model. It brought about increased coordination and oversight, as well as
the upscaling of capabilities, infrastructure and provisions.
Originality/value – The paper contributes to the literature on food aid in the UK It provides evidence for how
providers are transforming the sector for the better and potentially helping to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
Keywords Food aid, Food insecurity, Food waste, Surplus food, Food bank, COVID-19 pandemic, Poverty
Paper type Research paper
Table of contents (12 chapters)
Introduction
Alejandro Colás, Daniel Monterescu, Ronald Ranta
Pages 1-20
Part I. Beginnings: Hybrid Food Cultures and Foodways
Spanish Settlers and Andean Food Systems
Lisa Markowitz
Pages 23-46
What Belongs in the “Federal Diet”? Depictions of a National Cuisine in the Early American Republic
Peter Mabli
Pages 47-63
The Taste of Colonialism? Changing Norms of Rice Production and Consumption in Modern Taiwan
Yujen Chen
Pages 65-84
‘Like the Papacy of Mexican Cuisine’: Mayoras and Traditional Foods in Contemporary Mexico
Claudia Prieto-Piastro, Alejandro Colás
Pages 85-106
Part II. From Erasure to Decolonisation
Unsettling the History of Macadamia Nuts in Northern New South Wales
Adele Wessell Adele Wessell
Pages 109-126
Definitions of Hawaiian Food: Evidence of Settler Colonialism in Selected Cookbooks from the Hawaiian Islands (1896–2021)
Laura Kitchings
Pages 127-146
Decolonising Israeli Food? Between Culinary Appropriation and Recognition in Israel/Palestine
Ronald Ranta, Daniel Monterescu
Pages 147-171
‘Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown’: Lamb or Kangaroo, Which Should Reign Supreme? The Implications of Heroising a Settler Colonial Food Icon as National Identity
Jackie Newling
Pages 173-199
Part III. After Decolonisation?
“A Manly Amount of Wreckage”: South African Food Culture and Settler Belonging in Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative
Nitzan Tal
Pages 203-220
Sustaining the Memory of Colonial Algeria Through Food
Amy L. Hubbell, Jorien van Beukering
Pages 221-245
The Predicaments of Settler Gastrocolonialism
Lorenzo Veracini
Pages 247-259
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96268-5#toc
In this chapter, we argue that, starting with the Zionist establishment, then, after the establishment of the state, the Israeli government, tried to impose a new hegemonic food culture that rejected Jewish-diaspora food, and was grounded in modern concepts of nutrition, inspired by European food cultures, but based on local ingredients. in this new food culture, the differences between the various immigrant communities were expected to be less visible, and Arab-Palestinians invisible, at least on the plate. However, as we demonstrate through our analysis of cookbooks, culinary identities are hard to impose from the top-down. Israeli food history illustrates how attempts to impose from the top-down. Israeli food history illustrates how attempts to impose national food policies were negotiated and reinterpreted by those who were affected by them.
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 (including Portugal, Mexico, Slovenia, the USA, Ghana, Bulgaria, Scotland, Catalonia, Palestine, Costa Rica, Chile, Canada, Ecuador, 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.
responded and managed during the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach consists of three inter-related layers. A
qualitative description research approach based on naturalistic inquiry, supplemented by site visits and
personal observations was used.
Findings – The pandemic catalysed dramatic, often positive, changes to the provision of food aid, with a move
away from the traditional food bank model. It brought about increased coordination and oversight, as well as
the upscaling of capabilities, infrastructure and provisions.
Originality/value – The paper contributes to the literature on food aid in the UK It provides evidence for how
providers are transforming the sector for the better and potentially helping to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
Keywords Food aid, Food insecurity, Food waste, Surplus food, Food bank, COVID-19 pandemic, Poverty
Paper type Research paper
longer process in which the construction of Israeli identity and food culture was based on adaptation and imitation, leading to appropriation and nationalization of Arab-Palestinian food culture.
people among whom it developed. In that respect, and as argued hereafter, for political and ideological reasons the Palestinian direct contribution to Israeli food culture, and by
extension national identity, has been expunged or overlooked. Early Zionist encounter with the Arab-Palestinian people and their culture contained a mixture of romanticisation,
admiration and imitation. However, with the Zionist aim of substituting the Arab-Palestinian people by creating a separate political and economic society, the process of encounter changed to replacement, appropriation and deliberate forgetting and rewriting of the past. In relation to Israeli food culture, the Arab-Palestinian food element was
marginalised, blurred and reinterpreted as belonging to the Zionist settlers, or as being brought to Israel by the Mizrahi-Jews. In other words, Israeli food culture ‘needed’ the
Arab-Palestinian culture as a source of imitation and localisation, but at the same time desired its de-Palestinianisation, together with the general idea of a separate Jewish state.