Mediating cultural encounters at sea: dining in the modern cruise industry

Abstract

ABSTRACTBefore the mid-twentieth century, cruises were largely the preserve of elites. However by 1970 there was a dramatic shift toward a predominantly middle-class customer base; this change generated a need to revamp menus to satisfy the tastes of a new type of client. The mass-market cruise lines that dominate the modern era of cruising – from 1970 – increasingly offered passengers cuisine marketed as exotic – in ways that evoked ethnic or geographic ‘Others’. Companies used food as a way of mediating encounters between passengers and foreign cultures. Marketing plays a key role in determining the place of a dish in the familiar/exotic binary. In mediating cultural encounters, cruise lines demonstrate how they want passengers to conceptualise racial, social, and cultural Others. Today, cruise ships contain ethnically themed foods, spaces of consumption, and culinary service. Cruise lines offer these immersive ethnic themes to tourists on platforms that are constantly mobile, resulting in a fundamentally unique business model. In performing this combination, companies encourage tourists to immerse themselves in as many different cultures as possible, though in expedited ways that are inherently and intensely mediated.