Tradisjonsmat - SIFO

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course where traditional food must be a renewal of food traditions, and 3) a moderating discourse,
where traditional food can be both what has been and at the same time be renewing.
In conclusion we attempt to organize discourses surrounding traditional food along four main
axes on which the concept of traditional food is based. The four axes, time, place, form of
knowledge and depth of meaning must be seen in connection with the description of preserving,
moderating and innovating discourses.
First, the concept of traditional food is almost always associated with a time axis. The concept
refers to the habits and practices of earlier generations. However, the perspectives vary
with regard to how closely one should adhere to the past. While some people feel that “the
old ways” are always best and most correct, others feel that tradition requires renewal and
updating in order to survive. Here “the museum guards” confront “the innovators”, and as
usual, most people find themselves somewhere in between.
The second axis is geographical. Food traditions always belong somewhere, but what this
place is and how it is demarcated obviously varies a lot. Often one finds competing geographical
definitions, national, regional and local. In some cases this geographical dimension
takes on an obvious centre-periphery character. The districts are contrasted to the centre, the
latter implicitly understood as the capitol or some indistinct and generic anyplace-Norway. In
this sense, the geographical axis is also the axis where there most frequently and easily is
political mobilisation.
The third axis deals with know-how/skills, the aspects that are transferred from one generation
to the next. The extremes on this axis are on the one hand the trained handiness based
on gesture and oral transmission, and on the other hand the cook book recipe, hygiene regulations
and the school book in cook training. While the first is a verbal embodied “know-how”,
the other is more written and in its purest form based on abstract, science based knowledge.
Hygiene is an example of an area where the abstract, science based knowledge now has
achieved a kind of hegemony. Again, of course, most people position themselves somewhere
between these extremes.
The fourth axis, and the most implicit in the material we have gone through, deals with the
depth of meaning associated with the products. The depth of meaning is generally cultural,
characterised by collective values, but it is also associated with emotional perception of products,
frequently connected with special contexts (such as for instance preparing festive food,
or preparing dinner for a foreigner), or it may also have a more practical, habitual and social
character, where some products become social points of reference in everyday life. In a world
where the convenient and superficial is given much space, there still exist things that mean
something for the individual, and food often plays such a role.
In conclusion, this brief discourse analysis shows that traditional food can be said to be
based on different complimentary axes associated with time, place, form of knowledge and
depth of meaning. To what extent these axes are emphasised by different actors in different
discourses varies. The concept of traditional food thus emerges as a dynamic concept that
creates tension between preserving, moderating and innovating discourses.