Project Details
Projekt
Food as Cultural Heritage: A Critical and Comparative Perspective
Applicant
Dr. Raul Matta
Subject Area
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Term
from 2013 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 243489380
In different regional contexts, heritage politics are encouraging the revitalisation and the promotion of particular and traditional food products with different aims, such as cultural recognition and market exploitation. The listing of the gastronomic meal of the French, the traditional Mexican cuisine and the Mediterranean diet as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, along with the promotion of routes of gastronomic heritage, are clear evidence of these trends. As a consequence, food cultures have moved to the centre of a triangulation between culture, identity and markets. This research will critically question the particularity of food heritage, as it is pulled to and from between the many options of commodification and the enhancement of human activities that bring forth foodways in the first place. The project employs ethnographic and historical approaches to compare different avenues of food heritage-making. The comparative perspective is crucial to allow for a differentiated understanding for why and how food and culinary heritage have been increasingly promoted. The research interrogates the role of food heritagisation in the negotiation of past and present identities, in the integration of social groups into the global economy, and in the attribution of value to people and substances involved in this process. Three lines of research are pursued to reach the objective of this project. a) Examine the link between food heritage and cultural identities: What are the identity mechanisms that take place in food heritagisation? b) Question the link between food heritage and local development strategies: How are objectives formulated in terms of cultural recognition? How are objectives formulated and what role is accorded to the idea and goal of development? What power relations are at play in food heritage-making? c) Articulate the requirements of cultural recognition and economic capitalisation in food heritage through the notion of value: Should value accorded to food heritage be understood separately from its relation to the value of people who produce it? How is value understood in the framework of food heritagisation?This project marks the emergence of a new and dynamic field of research in which identity, belonging, social inclusion and development stand out as key concepts.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Canada, France, Spain
