Vive le Foie Gras!

Abstract

This chapter explains how foie gras had come to be thought of as French food, and discusses the consequences of this development. It argues that foie gras overflowed its original regional borders and came to denote French national culture at least in part because it is contentious elsewhere—a significant version of gastropolitics called “gastronationalism.” Yet how foie gras is marketed to the French public today, including by the French state, conveniently obscures the industry's capital-intensive expansion and transformations over the last few decades. Foie gras's success should be understood as a social and cultural achievement, one made possible through the work of interdependent players and processes. While culture indubitably plays a pivotal role in the construction and reification of national symbols, the story of foie gras makes clear what can happen when markets and politics bolster explanations typically construed as cultural ones.