Baladi Chic: A Political Biography and the Boundaries of Local Taste in Israel/Palestine

Within the vibrant culinary scene in Israel and Palestine, Baladi emerges as a borderline, polysemic, and untranslatable concept. The term, derived from the Arab word Balad ,(بلد) represents a wide range of meanings and is linked to notions of communal identity and local authenticity. As a marker associated with the tension between modernity and tradition, between indigenism and progress, and between a collaborative economy and a capitalist market economy, the concept of Baladi evolved from an expression denoting peripheral inferiority to a Palestinian national symbol and finally to  coveted “indigenous chic,” linked to contemporary trends of sustainability and “local flavor.” In this article, based on socio-historical analysis, multi-site ethnographic fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with chefs, farmers, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and conservationists, it appears that the spatial and temporal boundaries of the Baladi concept are always fluid, and often challenge pre-established geopolitical boundaries. The article traces the social life of the Baldi concept in the local arena and examines its connection to the processes of modernization, colonization, and the development of Palestinian national identity, as well as its connection to processes of imitation, appropriation, and acquired indigeneity on the part of the Jewish-Israeli population. Through a dialectical and relational analysis of knowledge transfers, imitation, and dependence between the indigenous population and the settler population, Baladi is conceptualized as an expression of contact and transformation, a product of mutual translations, of linguistic and cultural migration, and of constant work on boundaries that cannot be outlined unambiguously.