Special issue introduction: representation of diasporic food cultures

Diasporic food cultures enter dominant societies through a variety of manners and spaces, in homes, at food fairs, restaurants, through cookbooks, in supermarkets, but also in visual media. This special section investigates how the representations of diasporic food cultures in popular television and film mediate a variety of food traditions which negotiate and challenge dominant societal assumptions about the present, the past and the future of food and eating, and their complex relationships to race, class, gender, identity and the environment. The contributions to the issue note how the meeting of various diasporic culinary traditions and the often already transcultural host food traditions marks the start of new, feminist, decolonial food cultures, identities and futures, which raise critical questions about our food culture. This investigation of the representation of diasporic food cultures not only reveals the continuing transmutation of food cultures but more importantly the transformation of culture as such, within an increasingly polarized, uneven and fortified world where the dominant food system contributes to a social and ecological breakdown.