Food reinforces ties between Pacific peoples and their island homes, while linking them to a wider world. Food globalises while it localises, thereby crossing national boundaries. It links families through exchanges and shared ideologies and diversifies over time and space. Increased options of foods from the land or from the supermarket are part of that diversity. Brands such as McDonalds and Coca-Cola are ‘not the tip of some globalizing iceberg, but rather the markers of a particular superordinate level of identity on a par with saving the rainforest’ (Miller 1997, 80). Food is an identity marker that both links families overseas to their island home and distinguishes the two communities.

This paper aims to demonstrate that mobile communities have carried their gastronomies with them across space and time, modifying them according to social and environmental dictates. The cultural values embodied in these gastronomies have been subject to a number of influences that can be captured in three ‘foodscapes’. Foodscapes, I argue, are additional to Appadurai’s ethnoscapes, which he sees as ‘the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and other moving groups and individuals who constitute an essential feature of the world…’ (1996, 33). Mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes, plus foodscapes, indicate ‘irregular shapes, imagined in their complexity, and the product of deeply perspectival constructs’ (ibid, 33). Perspectives on foodscapes allow us to depict the mobilisation of cultural differences ‘in the service of a larger national or transnational politics’ (ibid., 15). They have a place in the construction of insights into this ‘shifting world’ of modernity and identity (ibid, 33).

Throughout history people have been transferring their foodways as they move across land and sea, linking with the past as well as considering novel food choices. ‘A historical overview is just as useful when looking at food and food systems as it is when considering globalisation as a whole…It is analytically useful to link up what is happening now to what has already happened’ (Mintz 2006, 4). Transnationalism offers an alternative approach to globalisation as it provides a focus on cultural distinctions. As populations spread, foods gain significance as much for their novelty as for their ties to the past. Foodscapes depict those historical and spatial links.

Here, I contrast Pacific foodscapes that link Asian influences with modern influences emanating from a Euro/American background (often referred to as westernisation). The first oriental foodscape depicts the gastronomies of early voyagers as they established new communities with foodstuffs they carried with them. A more recent foodscape, largely post World War II, captures Asian gastronomic influences that recent Chinese communities have brought with them. The third set of influences, that stem from occidental ideologies, have led to a proliferation of western foods imported to the islands, as well as the options in supermarkets. All three foodscapes are blended to offer a range of options, whether in the form of taro chips or hamburger buns, each depicting interpretations of cultural identity.

Foodscapes represent different forms that gastronomies can take as a result of past and present influences. Brillat-Savarin introduced the term gastronomy through his focus on the many features of ‘taste’ as the key element of gastronomy: ‘It examines the effect of food on man’s character, his imagination, his wit, his judgement, his courage, and his perceptions…It is gastronomy which determines the point of esculence of every foodstuff, for they are not all palatable in identical circumstances’ (1970, 53). While he depicts individual tastes, he provides a broader framework than just the material aspects of food. Modern gastronomy includes six key features that contribute to the depiction of a foodscape:

A gastronomic framework is dynamic as it is challenged by new options that may be accepted, rejected, or adapted in some way, as exemplified by the Pacific custom of serving taro with fish, linking land and sea, or rice topped with instant noodles as a quick meal.

A transnational approach to gastronomies celebrates food as a means of cultural expression. It contrasts with a globalisation approach which stresses economic over other cultural concerns; Stiglitz has highlighted the need for alternatives to the homogenising capitalist approach to globalisation in which ‘economic interests take precedence over other values, particularly cultural identity (2006, 129). He suggests that global approaches should support those discontented with the corporate interests that dominate trade and violate basic values such as heritage, language and a sense of cultural identity (ibid, 131). Foodscapes underline that respect for food in the enhancement of cultural identity.

An anthropological approach supports a transnational approach and is counter-intuitive to globalisation arguments. Significant differences between eastern and western gastronomies can be found in urban, rural and overseas communities. Resistance to innovations such as McDonalds and responses to body size as linked to ‘over-eating’ are two examples. As Miller’s anthropological view of capitalism suggests ‘anthropologists might argue that global institutions tend to look superficially similar wherever one finds them but if [they] are able to examine the evidence carefully they will find that underneath this façade of similarity may be discerned authentic differences’ (1997, 14). Furthermore, he points out that ‘institutions that generate new differences are just as important as new forms of homogeneity or old forms of separation’ (ibid, 15). Tracing transnational influences through foodscapes enables us to highlight the cultural continuities and innovations, choices that communities make to enhance their identity.