Interdisciplinary Exploration from Network Theory to Food Migration

Interdisciplinary Exploration from Network Theory to Food Migration

KISD WW1617 Prof. Nina Juric Yen Ju Chen

Figure 1 (cover image) 14 Billions by Tomás Saraceno “The desire to understand and give visual form to the way that matter holds together has led Saraceno further and further into the innermost, fundamental structures of the universe. In a series of works he has found his way into astrophysics and biology, to seek correspondences and analogies between the various scales and levels of existence; between theories of the genesis of galaxies and the logic of the growth of spiders’ webs. [...] When enlarged, the spider’s web’s enormous composite structure of tunnels, concentrations, nodes, offshoots and opaque patterns that follow a logic that is difficult for a human being to master, appears as an extremely effective entrapment technology developed over thousands of years. We find ourselves fascinated by its immense beauty. But also struck by the fact that the web is a grandiose image of what we both can and cannot do. We do not share in the spider’s knowledge. We have to stop at depiction, which, in its necessary abstraction and simplification, in itself bears witness to the limits of our knowledge.” (Arrhenius, 2011)

CONTENTS Interdisciplinary Learning 1.1 Social Computational Media 1.2 Network Theory 1.3 6 Degrees of Separation Inspiration and Link to Research Topic 2.1 Food Migration 2.2 Discovery through Data Collection 2.3 Pizza non Pizza Conclusion 3.1 What‘s learned?

Bibliography

Interdisciplinary Learning 1.1 Social Computational Media

In October 2016, I took part in a course Social Computational Media lectured by Prof. Dr. Jörn Grahl in the faculty of Economic and Social Science of the Universtiy Köln. Prof. Dr. Jörn Grahl is a specialist major in Information System, Operations Research and Econometrics.

Through lectures of one semester, he led us to step into the world of network analysis, and showcased us how to decipher networks to characterize social behavior, motivations, practices and phenomenon by means of multidisciplinary methods derived from Graph Theory, Statistics, Social Science and Marketing and Management.

In the modern prosperity of digitalization, many economic transactions, including the act of purchase and customer service, as well as social transactions, including the exploration and maintenance of social contacts are

conducted on digital platforms. The imprints of our actions on computational media have led to massive data collected, allowing scientists to observe individual level as well as societal scale behavior, preferences and social ties, visualize networks, unveil patterns and predict the future. To tackle the goals of the course, prof. Dr. Grahl drafted 5 questions to lay out the learning: 1. What is connected to what, and, what does this mean?

2. What is the structure of large networks between people, things and information?

3. Which large-scale patterns emerge?

4. Do patterns vary with context?

5. What is the influence of network structure on economic outcomes? (Grahl, 2016)

1.2 Network Theory

What is Network?

The term “network” often possesses multiple meanings defined by dictionaries.

It has stated in the Cambridge Dictionary as either “a large system consisting of many similar parts that are connected together to allow movement or communication between or along the parts, or between the parts and a control centre”, or “a number of computers that are connected together so that they can share information”. The Business Dictionary divides the types of networks into computers and communications. A computational network is “a group of interconnected (via cable and/or wireless) computers and peripherals that is capable of sharing software and hardware resources between many users. The Internet is a global network of networks.”, while a communicational network is “a system that enables users of telephones

or data communications lines to exchange information over long distances by connecting with each other through a system of routers, servers, switches, and the like”.

Defined by the Oxford Dictionaries which I find most suitable and most holistic to approach the understanding of the network theory, a “network” indicates “an arrangement of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines” as a spider net inspiring many magnificent works of data visualization, as well as “a group or system of interconnected people or things”, such as a trade network, a railway network, a support network, or a computer network.

Networks are everywhere.

Networks cover human relations with mankind, with things and relations between things and between information.

Quoted from Albert-László Barabási, a

known physicist for his development of the network theory, he claimed: We are surrounded by systems that are hopelessly complex, from the society, a collection of six billion individuals, to communications systems, that these days link billions of devices, from computers to cell phones. Our very existence is rooted in the ability of thousands of genes to work together in a seamless fashion; our thoughts, reasoning, and comprehension of the world is hidden in the connections between billions of neurons in our brain. These systems, random looking at first, upon close inspection display endless signatures of order and self-organization whose quantification, understanding, prediction and eventually control is the major intellectual challenge for the science of the 21st century. (2016)

Figure 2 The network of Hollywood celebrities on twitter

Figure 3 Comparison of company structure between Apple and Google The Apple network (left) shows a centralized system indicating a top-down culture, whereas the Google network (right) suggests a more evenly distributed structure and the nature of work independence.

Figure 4 A cereal ingredient network based on customers‘ preferences from mymuesli

Network Theory A network consists of components (nods, vertices), interaction (links, edges, connections), and system (network, graph). A network is equal to a graph, often referring to real systems as world wide web and social network, whereas a graph is a mathematical representation of a network.

1 4 2 3 Figure 5 A network consisting of 4 nods and 4 links

Network theory is a study of graphs of related discrete objects in order to understand the structure and dynamics of networks between things, people and information. Networks exist in different types and forms. Network theory provides a set of techniques and tools to conduct network analysis. Analysis of networks by choosing a proper network representation to connect the meaningful attributes deliver scientists insights to foresee problems, predict the future and make better decisions. For instance, connecting individuals in working environment helps to explore a professional network, whereas connecting individuals who have sexual relationships with each other will outline sex networks. (Grahl, 2016) In the following chapter, an experiment on the known 6 Degrees of Separation theory will be introduced to understand how networks associate our lives.

1.3 6 Degrees of Separation

6 Degrees of Separation is an idea derived from the Small World Phenomenon which believes that every individual has the potential to message everyone on the planet within few number of steps. 6 degrees of separation, introduced by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 at the first place, therefore, states that every 2 human beings are able to connect to each other in a maximum amount of 6 steps. Frigyes noticed that as technology advanced, an individual‘s acquaintance network extended over physical distances and grew into a larger size. Everyone has a connection with anyone else in the globe despite of the span of space and differences. This theory became popular when Craig Fass, Brian Turtle and Mike Ginelli created the “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game aiming to link any actor to the Hollywood celebrity Kevin Bacon through no more than 6 connections.

In the 2008 film “Connected: The Power of 6 Degrees”, the director Annamaria Talas tested this theory by asking 40 participants locating all over the world to send a package to an geneticist Marc Vidal who was working in Boston, without searching for his personal information. The participants were only permitted to pass the package to their family or friends, then their family or friend abided by the same rule to their family or friends, and the receivers carry on. Through this process, researchers were allowed to validate if 6 degrees of separation functions or it‘s merely a myth.

Mathematician Steven Strogatz, together with his student Duncan Watts, discovered that even the small world theory failed to consider the overlaps of individuals‘ acquaintance networks (for instance, residents in a small villiage of Kenya could only know people from the

same village), the 6 degrees of separation could be proven due to random links connecting one closed social circle to another. In the Kenya case, the random links are the villagers who moved to other villages, which immediately ties up two closed social circles. Strogatz pointed out that “the world does not gradually grow smaller, it drops off the cliffs”.

New York

Boston

Nyamwara Nairobi

Figure 6 Travel map of a package One package was originally delivered from a Kenya village Nyamwara to a random link in Nairobi, then was sent to New York. Eventually it reached Marc Vidal successfully in 6 steps.

So, how does a pizza link to the network theory?

Inspiration and Link to Research Topic 2.1 Food Migration

Definition of Ethnic Food In my research of food communication, I assumed that ethnic food, or an ethnic eating experience as a more comprehensive term, serves as a channel of cross-cultural communication. Ethnic food is the perceived representing food of a foreign nation or culture. In short, it‘s the food we link to a certain country or culture, for instance, sushi to Japan and pizza to Italy. As Möhring expounded, in her 2008 paper about transnational food migration and the internalization of food consumption, “certain dishes, formerly typical only for one region or another, are stylized in such a way that they become the embodiment of national cuisines”.

“Ethnic” as an adjective defined by the Cambridge Dictionary means “relating to a particular race of people”, however, joints food, its relation with a nation’s or culture’s perceived images in contemporary,

especially sculpted in marketing strategies, is often mentioned rather than with a race. Such national or cultural images can be identified by outsiders who are not members of the group and vary from place to place. For instance, Schweinshaxe is seen as “the German food” in Taiwan, despite the fact that it originates from the Bavaria state and not presents the German cuisine as a whole. In another case, Bratwurst substituted beef for pork is seen as a symbolic German food in Indonesia due to its religious context of not eating pork. As stated by Möhring, “ethnic food is intrinsically involved in contemporary discourses on ethnic identities and serves undoubtedly as a ‘powerful metonym for national cultures’ as well as a ‘source of racial stereotyping’’’.

Authentic or not?

Another feature of ethnic food is its

transnational framework. As an example as döner kebab in Germany, it was invented identifying the Turkish group in Germany, introducing a new culture meaning accommodating a distinct social situation (Möhring, 2008, pp. 13). Ethnic food inevitably faces challenges to adapt local foodstuffs to the presentation of ethnic identity, which on the other hand, gives a chance to integrate it traits to a novel environment and introduce a rather familiar eating language to its eaters.

Ethnic eating environment thus becomes an interface that leads its eaters to its ethnic story. By learning the food, the taste, the ingredients, the tools, the manner, the etiquette, the settings and the physical environment, eaters acquire information of ethnic protocols and grow understanding of an ethnic culture. Yet it could also lead to misinterpretation or bias in a commercial environment such as

restaurants which tend to attract more customers by remaining characteristics customers expect and leaving out other unique features. For instance, serving rice with soy sauce-based fried meat or vegetable in most of the Asian restaurants in Germany.

Figure 7 Sushi Donut A creation of ethnic food in transnational framework.

2.2 Discovery through Data Collection

As my research proceeds, I collected information from interviews to look into locals‘ experience with ethnic food. One thing caught my attention was that a criteria eaters depend on to judge the food quality is the authenticity of food.

Many eaters believe that as long as the food is cooked similarly with the original methods and ingredients, it tastes better.

The charm of ethnic food does not only lay on its tastes, but it provides a scope for eaters to look into a foreign culture.

And it‘s not only the case in Germany.

Throughout my research, many interviewees when recalling their eating experience outside Germany, have mentioned about pizza. Pizza occupies a special position in the German diet. It‘s introduced by Italians to Germany for over generations. Many Germans in their 20s grew up with eating pizzas as their daily meals, therefore, many have forgotten that

pizza was nothing generated from the region. Pizza has rooted in memories accompanying these young Germans‘ childhood. As they left home, pizza thus became a convenient choice credited to the modern refrigeration technology and delivery service. Therefore, it‘s not hard to imagine that pizza possesses a function of comforting the lonely souls far away from home. When Germans travel, after experiencing multiple cultural shocks and exchanges, they look for something to bring the feeling of home, something they have from home, such as a pizza. However, a pizza from a distinct culture could carry total dissimilar characteristics from pizzas in Germany, which creates a greater disappointment than having a lousy pizza back home to the German travelers. These stories were then shared with me in the interviews and triggered my interest to investigate deeper from this point.

But, what makes food authentic? This question emerges inevitably when coming across discussions about food and culture.

Authenticity is a shield built up to prevent from the savage behavior foreigners treat our food. So then we frown, grumble, tease, contempt and overly criticize while noticing our food is forged with features that do not belong to us. We are disappointed thinking our food is not treated in a right way. This judgement also reflects our fear of “we are not treated in a right way”.

Another question raises when we are busy to protect our legacy from being ruined from outsiders, which in the same time questions ourselves: Are we the creators of our own food? When we trace back to the origin of our food, we often find something that we are reluctant to admit, is that every food is a creation from somewhere else. Take pizza as an

obvious example, even how proud an Italian can be of their pizzas, pizza is not a 100% Italian invention. Records of different ingredients on flatbread are found throughout ancient history in Sardinia island, in ancient Greece, in Persian armies and in the Roman Empire.

Similar variations have discovered all over the world, such as Lebanese manakish, Greek pita, German flammkuchen, French quiche, Chinese bing and Indian naan.

Nowadays, pizza is considered as a type of bread with tomatoes and cheese.

Nevertheless, not until the late 19th century has it turned to this savory version. Before, pizzas were always sweet.

The modern pizza developed in its way after tomato was brought from America to Europe in the 16th century. Napleans started to add tomatoes on their yeast bread in the late 18th and have gained huge popularity among the poors since.

2.3 Pizza non Pizza

That‘s the moment I found inspiration from the theory of 6 degrees of separation.

If every person has some sorts of connections to any other individual in the world, isn‘t food also the same, linking with one another through certain kinds of connections? Naples would not be able to claim the invention of today‘s pizza if tomatoes were not brought from America at the first place. The food network is a complex system, yet it will never stop changing its shape. To visualize these connections, I began to ask around my friends about the pizza styles they have at home and collected their experience with pizzas during travels. Later on, I remade the pizzas based on their descriptions to seek for patterns of the food network.

As the international food as pizza which has been popularized globally, it has integrated into the regional diets and become one of the daily food choices for

billions of population. Pizzas in different cultures have developed their own characteristics illustrating the intercultural influences. The imagination of the pizzas motivates people to do plentiful experiments and recreate this exotic delicacy with their local ingredients. It's, however, not a very thrilling news for the Italians who prefer to maintain their tradition.

Eventually, I recreate 10 pizzas from different regions: Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, Germany, Lebanon, Nepal, Bolivia, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, based on interviewees‘ descriptions of their home pizzas and the pizzas they have experienced during traveling. These pizzas were then documented in the format of photos. The pizzas which follow the Italian recipes and the similar variants from the local cuisines were excluded from this experiment.

Salami

Tomato Sauce

Cheese Romania "In Romania, we have similar pizzas as in Italy, however, we put more things on the pizza. More tomato sauce, more cheese, more of everything."

Pineapple

Cheese Ham

Tomato Sauce

Hungary "Our pizza has thick dough following the style of American pizza. Sometimes instead of tomato sauce, we use ketchup as the base. The common ingredients for pizza are sausage, onion, ham, pineapple, bacon and cheap cheese."

Sweet Corn

Aubergine Cheese

Bell Pepper

Tomato Sauce

Ukraine "Our pizza is similar to Italian pizza. We use ingredients like paprika, corn and aubergine on the vegetarian pizza."

Schnitzel

Tomato Sauce

Cheese

Germany "When my family visited a pizzeria in Italy, my little brother ordered a 'Schnitzel Pizza' which was his favorite pizza back home, that terrified the waiter."

Tomato Sauce Bell Pepper

Thyme

Mushroom Olive

Cheese Lebanon

"We don't have special Lebanese pizzas. We have a pastry 'manakish' that foreigners think is Lebanese pizza, but it's not. I guess the 'Lebanese version' of a pizza is tomato sauce, bell peppers, olives, mushrooms and cheese. Most common is putting thyme instead of oregano on top."

Bell Pepper

Beef Steak

Cheese

Mushroom

Sweet Corn

China "I used to eat pizzas from this chain restaurant Babeila in Shanghai. It's cheaper than Pizza Hut. But it's only fast food, you cannot compare with real pizzas."

Mushroom

Bell Pepper

Beef Steak

Onion

Cheese

Black Pepper Sauce

Taiwan "I think Taiwanese people embrace new food. Food is just so important in their daily life that they celebrate with food, comfort themselves with food, honor their gods with food, and even mourn with food. Taiwan is also an immigrant land that you can see different cultures meet and integrate here. Like the pizza, they combine their traditional dish with it. Creating new food is in their nature."

Sausage Chicken

Bell Pepper

Olive

Peach

Cherry Tomato

Cheese Tomato Sauce

Hong Kong "There are basically 2 types of pizza. When I grew older, I am more willing to pay for authentic Italian or American pizzas. These pizzas are usually topped with ordinary and simple ingredients such as Parma ham and Rucola. If I meet with friends or ask for home delivery, Pizza Hut is the first choice. They offer flavors that have been adjusted to fit the taste of Hong Kong people, things like seafood with thousand island dressing, Hawaiian, or stuffed crust. New flavors are introduced by season."

Sweet Corn

Bell Pepper Mushroom

Naan

Cherry Tomato

Cheese

Spinach

Ketchup

Nepal "I remember the situation when we were in the mountain area in Nepal. There were places offering pizzas to the hikers. I said to myself: 'I will give it a try to see how it tastes'. I think they didn’t really know how a proper pizza should be made, out of which ingredients. They had this Nepalese bread and put tomato ketchup, cheese and some vegetables on it. Ketchup is a no-go for a pizza. From things like that, you see the cultural mix. It’s really fun."

Yeast Bread

Feta Cheese

Bolivia "You can find pizza everywhere, even in Bolivia. In Bolivia, they just don’t know how to make the bread, it’s super thick. And they put a lot of cheese on it, not yellow cheese but fresh cheese, it's feta they put on the pizza. It’s something else, it’s salty. And they don’t put tomato sauce on pizza, so basically bread with fresh cheese. Nothing else."

Conclusion 3.1 What‘s learned?

For instance, Lebanese pizza suggests the rich variety of vegetables in Lebanon, moreover, the diet could obey the religious rules of eating no meat.

5. Creativity is accepted and expected by the 1. Pizzas from the cultures which are locals in the recreation of ethnic food. The geographically closer to Italy display most obvious case is the pizza from Hong similar features as Italian pizzas, such as Kong.

Romania, Hungary and Ukraine.

6. The naming of pizzas in East Asia (China, Nevertheless, the making of pizzas is Taiwan, Hong Kong) shows the adjusted to fit the preference of the locals. imagination and perception of foreign 2. More distinct features are shown following cultures. For instance, American pizza the physical distance. The pizzas from East consists of big chuncks of steak, Japanese Asia have developed into a different genre. pizza combines takoyaki (a classical 3. Some styles of pizzas are based on the Japanese dish) with flatbread and massive imagination of pizzas which consist of amount of cheese, Mexican pizza flatbread and cheese. Pizzas from regions featuring the spiciness implies the locals‘ like Germany, Taiwan, Nepal and Bolivia perception of hot, spicy Mexican cuisine, largely adapt local ingredients and and so on. Pizza is an integrated combine the features of local food. production of multiple cultures.

4. The use of ingredients conveys 7. Even most of the traditional features are information about the regional culture. replaced, pizza is still considered as pizza A few things have been unveiled during the remaking of the pizzas which indicate an interesting aspect to look into different cultural characteristics:

as long as certain features of the origin remain.

Food has a long history since the first human was born. The invention of fire has brought us from the nature to cultures, allowing us to identify our place through the food we choose and the way we eat.

Authenticity is a vague argument that generates endless fights and no answer.

Traditional food tells stories about the past, whereas modern food tells stories about the present. The innovation of food embraces diverse cultures while celebrating the good food. So, why don‘t we be more open-minded and accept the new food?

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