Of food festivals and branding campaigns : the mapping of Singapore as a diverse food destination

Abstract

In 1981, acting health minister Goh Chok Tong passed an observation that eating is a national pastime for Singaporeans. Today, there is no denying that Singapore is a food haven that has been mapped as a food paradise to tourists as well as to its locals. With the rising foodie culture in the recent years, Singaporeans have also been subsumed to be foodies – a label propagated by the state.

While there is widespread assumption and acceptance of this national identity and labels, there are scarce resources analyzing the Singapore Tourism Board’s role in constructing this brand identity. Thus, this paper illuminates how the Singapore state, through the Singapore Tourism Board, constructed and commercialized Singapore as a food destination in Singapore from the 1970s. Through commercial nationalism, the state utilized the national identity of diversity and mapped Singapore and its food culture around it in the 1970s to 1990s. Hereinafter, branding Singapore as a diverse multicultural nation, the Singapore Tourism Board was able to build upon this national identity by marketing Singapore’s food scene. Through these, it was able to navigate and situate Singapore’s food scene between binaries of – diversity and racial harmony, tradition and modernity and local and international.