Food and economic nationalism

The chapter argues economic nationalism should be conceived broadly taking into consideration political action and symbolic values going beyond the thin economistic framework. The chapter makes its case by introducing food in an investigation of economic nationalism because food is a commodity, a legitimate subject in the study of economics, with highly symbolic values. This chapter explores the nature of economic nationalism in its dynamic relationship with other forces in the world with reference to the whaling controversy. The issue of whaling has transformed from a matter of resource management in which each nation would fight for its share of access to the resource – whales – to a problem of whale meat eating in which cultural and normative dimensions are transforming the issue. Using this example, we can trace how economic nationalism becomes entangled with other social forces and is transformed in the process.