« Territorial Food Identities. Tips for Gastronomy Actors. », in World Gastronomy Institute (ed.), WGI Global Report 2020 A Gastronomic Planet, Madrid : Bubok Editorial, 2020, p. 15-17

Main Author: Frédéric Duhart
Format: Book publication-section eJournal
Bahasa: eng
Terbitan: , 2020
Subjects:
Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/4061738
Daftar Isi:
  • A territorial food identity is characterised by a set of cultural markers that the majority of the inhabitants of a territory consider as indigenous to their culture and the foreigners identify as typical of this part of the world or frankly exotic. These markers are various: products, recipes, culinary techniques, consumption patterns, table manners, food preferences or representations. Logically, a territorial identity cannot be separate of a sense of belonging. The people who live in a certain area agree that their ways of eating present more similarities than differences and that they consequently share a common food culture that set them apart from the rest of humanity, especially from their closest neighbours. The identification of criteria for convergence/differentiation and the definition of their levels of relevance is necessarily an arbitrary choice as soon as we consider a territory where two or more human primary groups are settled. A village has its own food identity because its inhabitants decided to forget the “minor” differences that existed in the ways of eating between one family and another and to emphasise the existence of food emblems recognised by all the community members. The same process can be observed at all territorial levels. By consequence, the territorial food identity that can be found somewhere in the real world is generally complex because it is simultaneously local, regional, national, etc. To understand its dynamics, it is useful to imagine it as a large matrioska set. At the most local levels of identity, strong originality markers play a crucial role. At superior levels, federative elements are much more important. We will consider the case of Cuyoaco’s central district food identity. Cuyoaco is a town of about 2000 inhabitants in the municipality of Cuyoaco, in the state of Puebla, in Mexico, in North America.