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The ‘Social Life’ of Scouse: Understanding Contemporary Liverpool through Changing Food Practices

Questions of heritage, tradition and authenticity have been pushed to the fore by attempts to engineer a cultural and social ‘renaissance’ in the city of Liverpool, particularly in light of its recent European Capital of Culture status in 2008. Much of this reinvention has been discursive, asserting continuities with a re-imagined globalized, polyethnic and merchant past. This discursive turn has encouraged a resurgence of interest in the symbolic and cultural identities of Liverpool. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the dish, ‘scouse’ (and, the ‘Scousers’ who eat it) as it makes the transition from working class kitchens to the city’s well-to-do restaurants and bars. By drawing on the food history of Liverpool’s port, ethnographic observations and narrative accounts of food experiences, this article traces the ‘social life’ of scouse from its historical origins and symbolic links to poverty and identity to its emergence as a repositioned culinary cultural artefact of urban regeneration.