Additional Background Research Literature Review

Food & Culture

In the context of globalization, food plays an important role in the preservation of culture. Besides being indispensable to human survival, it is suggested that food is a critical dimension of cultural heritage that conveys the history and culture of societies (Catherine Henderson, 2014). By examining recipes and ingredients, the conditions in societies in past and present can be discovered. Moreover, traditional recipes are worth preserving in that traditional food is regarded as important for forming the cultural identity because it reminds and connects people to their ethnic groups and their homeland.

Motivation for Preserving Traditional Recipes

Through the examination of food and culture, it is identified that people’s emotional connection with traditional food is particularly evident in immigrants, who tend to relate food with their memories for family and are consequently motivated to preserve authentic food and traditional recipes in order to sustain their cultural background and identity (Mannur, 2007; Williams-Forson, 2014). This gives implications for the application to include users’ family in the target audience, providing a place for families to be connected. In doing this, the application aims to reach more users, motivate use, and encourage users to preserve their family culture as a means to preserve the culture they belong to.

Advantages for mobile technologies

According to De Souza e Silva (2006), while people communicate via mobile phones from distant places, hybrid space is created which makes them connected, involving them into the same remote context. This would be helpful for communication cross cultures for my project in that it connects people easily and brings them closer, which helps to promote understanding for unfamiliar cultures.

Since my project is dedicated to building a large size of a multiuser environment which requires flexibility for users to share content, De Souza e Silva provides me with justification for how mobile technologies allow constant online state that makes online communication occur easily at any time, and integration of mobile phones into the context of use. In addition, the author’s emphasis on location awareness and its influence on interaction makes me consider how to use of location-based technologies to allow closer connection between users.

Reference

1. Catherine Henderson, J. (2014). Food and culture: in search of a Singapore cuisine. British Food Journal, 116(6), 904-917
2. Williams-Forson, P. (2014). “I Haven't Eaten If I Don't Have My Soup and Fufu”: Cultural Preservation through Food and Foodways among Ghanaian Migrants in the United States. Africa Today, 61(1), 69-87.
3. Mannur, A. (2007). Culinary nostalgia: Authenticity, nationalism, and diaspora. Melus, 32(4), 11-31.
4. De Souza e Silva, A. (2006). From cyber to hybrid: Mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces. Space and culture, 9(3), 261-278.