Edible communities: How Singapore creates a nation of consumers for consumption

Abstract

Scholars have noted the power of state-led discourse to create a national identity as an imagined community and have explicitly linked food to state-orchestrated narratives of nationhood. Others have described how a nation is constructed and maintained through everyday ‘banal nationalism’. This article combines the two to observe how state-led and everyday nationalisms are combined into a national promotional food narrative in order to attract travellers and the economic benefits they bring. Through thematic content analysis of all the food-related texts on the Singapore Tourism Board’s website this article uncovers dominant ideologies shaping tourism strategies aimed at driving consumption. Contrasting themes of heritage and innovation, unity and diversity, and local and international in food culture are presented to visitors, at the same time as defining the local people as consumers to further stimulate consumption. These findings drive analysis of how consumption may be depicted in a way that amounts to state-sponsored ingestion of a country and its people.