Jacinthe Bessière

Local Development and Heritage: Traditional Food and Cuisine as Tourist Attractions in Rural Areas

This paper analyses the transformation and redefinition of local identity in rural France from the perspective of heritage – more precisely food and gastronomy – and local rural tourism. As an identity marker of a geographic area and/or as a means of promoting farm products, gastronomy meets the specific needs of consumers, local producers and other actors in rural tourism. The paper considers the meaning of food from a theoretical perspective. The current interest in traditional food and cuisine is part of a general desire for authentic experiences. At the regional level, the dynamics of building up heritage consist in actualizing, adapting, and re-interpreting elements from the past, thus combining conservation and innovation. Local development can be seen as a process of territorial and heritage construction. Culinary heritage is a social construction and an important resource for local action. The paper examines the case of the Haut Plateau de l’Aubrac (Central France), where the local development process is closely linked to the valorization and the re-creation of gastronomic knowledge and skill.

‘Heritagisation’, a challenge for tourism promotion and regional development: an example of food heritage

As a marker of regional identity, heritage remains a complex field of inquiry. The discussion proposed here will use food to investigate the process of heritage construction or ‘heritagisation’ as an important issue for rural tourism promotion. If food today is considered to be a locus of inter-cultural exchange that contributes to the construction of social identities, then it could also be considered as an important resource for rural development strategy. As it is also strongly associated with the tourism sector, gastronomic heritage, in its forms of construction and mobilisation, calls into question the social and cultural dynamics of a given space. The objective of this discussion is twofold and will treat the notion of heritage as a social construct and as a resource for action. We will attempt to answer the following question: At what point can heritage become a resource and component of professional opportunities? To what extent does this prove to be undeniably subject to the process of local ownership? Methodological note: I emphasise that this discussion, which results from a study of three rural regions in France, will attempt to formally and objectively posit a means of comprehending the process of heritage creation.