Lucy M. Long

Food pilgrimages: Seeking the sacred and the authentic in food

People often travel specifically to partake of a particular food. This travel may involve a range of distances—from local (trying a new restaurant in town) to far away (going to another country). It can also involve a variety of experiences connected to food—touring wineries, observing chefs, assisting farmers or fishermen, attending food-themed festivals, experimenting with new cooking techniques or equipment, and, obviously, tasting and consuming foods. Such traveling can be seen as a form of culinary tourism (“eating out of curiosity”) and perceived as a recreational or educational activity, but it also frequently takes on the character of a ritualistic quest to fully experience a food or cuisine in its “authentic” and original cultural context. Similar to a religious pilgrimage in which individuals visit a shrine, often seeking a spiritual experience, food pilgrimages offer a different experiencing of a food. Such pilgrimages frequently result in individuals feeling a deeper and more personal understanding of that food along with a sense of an “authentic” experience of it. While such journeying has occurred throughout history, it has recently become a fashionable and profitable component of the modern tourist industry. Data from fieldwork in Spain, Ireland, the American Midwest and South, as well as analyses of current advertising and marketing, provide an exploration of the phenomena of food pilgrimages and their cultural, political and personal ramifications.

Nourishing the academic imagination: The use of food in teaching concepts of culture

Scholars using food as a subject of critical inquiry have long known that food, food-related beliefs, and behaviors surrounding food are expressive of how a culture conceptualizes its physical, social, and cultural universes. They have also shown that food is a primary tool of enculturating individuals into the social rules and ethos of a particular culture: learning how and what to eat is synonymous with becoming civilized. Examining questions such as which items of the natural world are deemed edible; what preparation procedures are necessary to transform a natural product from raw to cooked; with whom food can be shared and how it can be used to demonstrate or earn status can lead to greater understanding of that cultural group. Therefore, food can serve as a window into specific cultures and can readily be used to teach concepts about culture, including both specific theoretical models as well as research methods. In doing so, the study of food can enable students to critique their own cultural groups and their roles within them. Food is particularly appropriate for such endeavor because it surrounds us and is woven so thoroughly into everyday life. It is readily available as both data and example. At the same time, it is integral to many festive rituals, celebrations, and public displays in which identity is intentionally embodied and presented so that the symbolic meanings are foregrounded and accessible for observation. Also, unlike art or music, which require a certain amount of experience and skill, food is a domain of activity that we all participate in to some degree, regardless of competence, personal history, and socio-economic

POLÍTICA CULTURAL NO TURISMO GASTRONÔMICO COM ALIMENTOS ÉTNICOS

Culinary tourism features food as the primary attraction or motivation for travel (Boniface, 2003; Hall & Sharples, 2003; Hjalager & Richards, 2002; Long, 1998, 2004; Quan & Wang, 2004). It is a highly popular and profitable industry in both international and domestic tourism segments and has a significant impact on food-related businesses. The identification, selection, evaluation, and interpretation of the cuisines and dishes included in such tourism are issues of power, that is, cultural politics. Who gets to make those selections? Whose recipe is used to represent a culture? Whose definition of the cuisine is presented? Who is considered the authority, by whom, and how did they come to be in that position? Cultural politics become even more complicated when culinary tourism features ethnic foods, that is, cuisines, dishes, ingredients, belonging to a heritage considered outside the foodways of the mainstream culture. Ethnic foods are defined partly by how they differ from the foods of the dominant culture, and their place within that culture reflects a history of being “other.” Culinary tourism focuses attention on the food’s otherness, making that otherness one of its central attractions. It offers new tastes and an entry into strange new cuisines through those tastes. In the US, food businesses have historically offered one of the most accessible contexts for employLUCY M. LONG lucymlong@gmail.com