Culinary Resistance Beyond Gastronationalism: Terroir, Smallholder Networks and the Ottoman Roots of Agrarian–Urban Solidarity in Turkey

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship on culinary globalization has theorized homogenization and glocalization through urban consumption, leaving underexamined the transnational agro-ecological networks that make culinary resistance materially possible. Drawing on qualitative interviews with thirty professional chefs in Istanbul, this study develops a generalizable framework for culinary resistance in post-imperial societies, extending to contexts where imperial heritage, agrarian networks and global food regimes intersect. Culinary actors resist McDonaldization not only through gastronationalist reflexes, but through alternative food networks bypassing agro-industrial supply chains for direct smallholder procurement. Three theoretical contributions are advanced: first, hybridity is the foundational condition of culinary culture in post-imperial societies, rendering the homogenization–heterogenization binary insufficient; second, DeSoucey's gastronationalism is provincialized beyond its EU context, showing resistance operates through informal networks and agrarian–urban solidarities without regulatory scaffolding; third, the agrarian–urban solidarity matrix reframes the supply chain – rather than the kitchen – as the primary site of culinary resistance.