Territories: A Trans-Cultural Journal of Regional Studies

This case study examines how food may play a role in enhancing inter-cultural communication and collaboration through a food-related COIL project among students who are enrolled in food and nutrition courses in two different countries. Students taking a semester-long nutrition course at a university in California and students in a culinary art course in Ecuador worked in groups to complete a Food Product Analysis and Development project. The project focused on Ecuadorian food products, and most of the COIL activities involved examination of food. A qualitative evaluation revealed that food played an important role in enhancing inter-cultural communication and collaboration in different ways. First, food was an effective ice breaker and a tool for team building. Second, food also played a role in learning about culture and identifying similarities between the two cultures in a unique way. The project gave Ecuadorian students the opportunity to showcase their own culture, which provided them with a sense of pride. Among American students, learning about the history and consumption of food that was foreign to them sparked their curiosity about Ecuador. Finally, experiential learning through food, such as cooking and tasting food, appeared to help students keep motivated about the project and make the group project more enjoyable. Our findings suggest that food may be used as a vehicle for inter-cultural communication and global competency in higher education. Further research is needed to effectively evaluate learning outcomes of food-related COIL projects. The importance of developing interdisciplinary, community-based food-related COIL projects is also discussed.

The combination of the fields of study of gastronomy and diplomacy is generating a number of highly valuable academic works that cover multiple dimensions of knowledge and social spheres. However, the potential of gastrodiplomacy to explore conflict (or the possibility of it) has not been fully explored. This article aims to fill this gap by complementing the concept of gastrodiplomacy with that of gastrology. In this way, it aims to consider the relationship between gastronomy, diplomacy and conflict, understanding the latter as the conflict zones that emerge between communities, identities, worldviews or even different ways of understanding the value and uses of gastronomy. Based on this analysis, and assuming that gastronomy is part of every culture and, therefore, is open to a multiplicity of meanings giving rise to ambivalences, paradoxes and tensions, it will be argued that gastronomy (and gastrodiplomacy) as a tool, practice and discourse of mediation (and expansion) of estrangement tends to oscillate between the ordinary, the sublime and the grotesque. To this end, the article will refer to violent conflicts between minority and majority national groups. The aim is not to analyse each case in depth, but rather to explore the interrelationship between diplomacy and gastronomy and these conflicts. In doing so, the article will contribute to a better understanding of the potential of gastronomy and diplomacy to think about and work on difference, estrangement and conflict.

How does food operate as a medium for informal diplomacy between individuals and nations? In what ways do citizen culinary diplomacy and individual gastrodiplomacy diverge from official or state-sponsored culinary exchanges? This article examines these questions through the experiences of two American POWs from the Korean War, Morris R. Wills and Clarence Adams, focusing on food as a site of private, people-to-people interaction. As POWs in Korea and later as foreign guests in China, Adams and Wills navigated identities suspended between official representation and personal agency, granting them unique access to Chinese diplomats and political elites. How did their trajectories evolve after returning to the United States during the Cultural Revolution? Wills attained a prestigious position at Harvard in the late 1960s, while Adams became the first African American millionaire through his ownership of a Chinese restaurant chain in the 1970s. While Wills prioritized survival—securing basic livelihood—Adams leveraged culinary entrepreneurship as a means of self-empowerment. Adams’ story, in particular, illuminates the role of semi-official food diplomacy and citizen culinary diplomacy in fostering cross-cultural understanding during a critical phase of U.S.-China relations.