ABSTRACT

This chapter explores what lies behind the preoccupation with yogurt in present-day Bulgaria, and examines how its valorization, as a national product, is facilitated by its global marketization, specifically in Japan. The dynamics of the relationship between the daily consumption and production of yogurt, and its symbolic role in public discourses have changed over time in Bulgaria. During socialism when yogurt shifted from the domestic to the public sphere of production it was defined as the people's food and was promoted as a basic food in state nutrition policies. In other words, with the increase of spatial, cognitive, and institutional distances between production and consumption in postsocialist Bulgaria, the culturally constructed stories of commodity flows have acquired a particular intensity. Due to its international valorization, the people's food has become a representation both of national traditions and the health conscious, nature oriented lifestyles associated with Western modernity.