Social Identities:
Journal
for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture
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ABSTRACT
Food
and consumption practices are cultural symbols of communities, nations,
identity and a collective imaginary which bind people in complex
ways. The media framed the 2013 horsemeat scandal by fusing
discourses beyond the politics of food. Three recurrent media frames
and dominant discourses converged with wider political debates
and cultural stereotypes in circulation in the media around immigration
and intertextual discourse on historical food scandals. What
this reveals is how food consumption and food-related scandals
give rise to affective media debates and frames which invoke
fear of the other and the transgression of a sacred British identity,
often juxtaposing ‘Britishness’ with a constructed ‘Otherness’.
