National Identity for Breakfast: Food Consumption and the Everyday Construction of National Narratives in Estonia

Abel Polese,Tanel Kerikmae,Ammon Cheskin,Oleksandra Seliverstova

doi:10.1017/nps.2019.131

Abstract

AbstractPolitical debates on the Baltics, and in particular Estonia, have often pointed to “nationalisting” and exclusive narratives constructed at the institutional level. Accordingly, emphasis has been put on the lack of opportunities for Russians to integrate into an Estonian context. While acknowledging the shortfalls of the Estonian political project, this article contrasts these views in two ways. By emphasizing people’s agency and their capacity to question, contrast, or even reject the identity markers proposed by Estonian official narratives, we maintain that the integration of Russians might be more advanced than insofar claimed by other studies. We then look at the way identities are lived in an everyday context by inhabitants of Estonia to counterpose national narratives proposed by the state and its political institutions, with the way people live and whether they accept these narratives. By doing this, we explore the role of the everyday in the reconstruction of national identity narratives, in which citizens actively participate in their individual capacity. We suggest that, from a James Scott “infrapolitics” perspective, these micro-actions have a fundamental role in the reshaping of a national identity and its acceptance among citizens.

Highlights

Everyday Identities and Methodological Dilemmas With 1.3 million Russian speakers and 1 million ethnic Russians, the Baltics remain under close scrutiny for their attitude toward Russian minorities
We propose looking at the way non-institutional actors and ordinary citizens in Estonia act to contrast, challenge, reproduce, and renegotiate national identity—or at least the idea of national identity that is put through formal channels by the state and state-managed actors
Food has a political significance, especially since there is a political discourse giving certain meanings to certain foods and the choice to consume a given product. This is tendency that we have identified for the Baltics, and especially Estonia, and allows a given food to have a symbolic political meaning (Polese and Seliverstova 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Everyday Identities and Methodological Dilemmas With 1.3 million Russian speakers and 1 million ethnic Russians, the Baltics remain under close scrutiny for their attitude toward Russian minorities. This strategy gives continuity to the attempts to create associations between Estonia and its inhabitants by labeling the country as technological but committed to nature and confirming the special relationship that Estonians allegedly have with nature (Polese and Pawlusz 2017b) This construction of patriotic food can be regarded as something incepted by entrepreneurs from the business sector but matching state-led attempts to create a relationship with food, its production, and its marketing. By packaging products in suggestive ways and promoting the association of healthy-localEstonian, food producers contribute to influencing people’s choices and their everyday consumption This results in the formation of narratives with different degrees of rupture with the past. What results from these two forces is a hybrid model of consumption and acceptance of consumer patterns that reflects an identity that is negotiated through everyday consumption by citizens

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion