Fusion Cuisine: Globalization You Can Taste

International travel, both professional and personal, for business and for pleasure, has increased the rate, degree, and scope of exposure, appreciation, and adoption of global foods, global recipes, and global cuisines of dissimilar nations and divergent cultures.

Fusion cuisine, fusion foods, and fusion recipes phenomena are integrative and creative in process and product. These fusion phenomena or phenomenons are neither synthesis, blending, nor synergy. Respective foods and food preparation methods maintain their distinctive and separate tastes, aromas, and characteristics. Through fusion cuisine, creative integration engenders amazing food, eating, and dining experiences.

Additionally, just as fusion cuisine is the globalization of foods, food preparation methods, recipes, cooking, and presentation through creative integration of different cultures and peoples, so, too, is fusion cuisine an influential element in economic and social globalization as a world-shaping phenomenon.

Time and timing are key drivers for fusion cuisine. Whereas traditional foods, recipes, and cooking practices develop slowly within families and local communities over time, fusion cooking is being driven by chefs and other cooking professionals in a relatively short, continually creative, rapid process. Globalization, as an economic and social phenomenon, is conducive to this accelerated development time.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF LANGUAGES & COMMUNICATIONS
The language of food transcends nations, peoples, and governments. Some would argue language, per se, can be thought of in an analogous, fusionable way. Words, phraseologies, syntax, context, and expressions may exist as individualized experiences in fusion. Yet, fusion in language does not lend itself to the rapid integrative and creative outcomes on a global scope and scale that food does.

Grounded in languages, a parallel point-counterpoint argument applies to the fusionability of communications. (Communications here encompasses both communication processes and communication products.)

One can both utilize fusion cooking practices and enjoy fusion cooking foods and fusion recipes without being specifically familiar or aware of the cultural and historical underpinnings of a region or nation. One can cook and it's fun, satisfying, instantly rewarding and gratifying. One can eat and it's delicious, pleasurable, and immediately good. This is not true of national languages and regional dialects which require a functional level of understanding grounded in respective culture and history.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF RELATIONSHIPS
Personal relationships and romance are other essential global experiences which may lend themselves to a fusion approach. Arguably, this is because there is a commonality or constantancy at a basic human level, irrespective of current or past place and time. As the sensual experience of succulent cuisine transcends nations, peoples, and government, so, too may the ultimate experiences of the senses.

Can an American man from the Midwest meet, fall in love with, and have a lasting, satisfying personal relationship or romance with a woman from Tokyo? Can a Parisian French woman meet, fall in love with, and have a lasting, satisfying personal relationship or romance with a man from California?

With a disposition toward internationalism and a melting pot history, America is a prime and fertile locale for fusion to occur and succeed. This is true for fusion cuisine. On a limited scale, this can be true for the fusion of languages and communications. This may be true for personal relationship fusion and fusion romances.

Fusion Cuisine, Fusion Communication, Fusion Relationships? To fuse or not to fuse: it's all a matter of taste. Bon Appétit!

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All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Michael K. Miller of Millennium Suites, LLC 2008