Richard,
Absolutely. I agree entirely with your points/questions. Of course
all food is "ethnic", and we could barely begin (even if we wanted
to) to work out what came from where, but none of this is recognised
in a debate which deems curries ethnic because Bham has a relatively
large Asian population. My point was precisely that all the food we
eat (music we listen to, books we read etc. etc. etc.) comes from
somewhere but that only certain foods are labelled "ethnic" (and
hence exotic) and seen to be the foods of 'other' people. A
recognition of the politics (and history) of that labelling was
completely absent from the reporting of the incident (probably not
surprisingly).
Alison
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Alison Stenning
School of Geography and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
BIRMINGHAM
B15 2TT
phone: 0121 414 6922
fax: 0121 414 5528
mailto:[log in to unmask]
website http://www.bham.ac.uk/geography/stenning.htm
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