Burning Love: Pork Politics, Nationalism, and Othering in Contemporary Denmark
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Abstract
This paper examines the so-called Danish “meatball war,” a political contestation about the place of pork, halal, and kosher foods in Danish public institutions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and an analysis of newspaper articles and government documents, I argue that this particular conflict offers a window through which we can observe the transformation of Danish nationalism and a breach in their shared folk psychology. By focusing on political discourse in the media and social media posts, the meatball war offers an illustrative example of how food and foodways are used as weapons against particular groups, and the ways in which politicians create and amplify cultural conflicts in order to capitalize on populist and anti-immigrant sentiments in contemporary Europe. While much of the discussion was aimed the Muslim and refugee communities, the debate nonetheless excluded other communities, like Jews, from the national imaginary.
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