Paper short abstract:

Gahwa, part of the intangible heritage of the UAE, makes coffee, its preparation, and social context, an internationally recognized part of Gulf hospitality, and symbol of national and ethnic identity. Gahwa remains relevant as ceremonial ritual, museum display and now also enjoys a digital life.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015 gahwa (Arabic coffee) was recognized by UNESCO as part of the intangible heritage of the UAE, making coffee, its preparation, and social context, an internationally recognized part of the heritage of hospitality, and symbol of national and ethnic identity. Yet, this most local of beverages is dependent on international trade as coffee came first from the Yemen, now often South Asia, and the cardamom, saffron and rose water used to scent coffee are also imported.

The recognition of gahwa as part of the UAE's intangible heritage came just when the preparation of gahwa was being relegated from an everyday part of social life to an event reserved for special occasions, museum performances and social history lessons. Gahwa preparation is today the focus of national competitive displays.

Across the UAE, gahwa was served in majalis (assemblies) where social hierarchies are made visible through seating order, and where gahwa etiquette is highly ritualized. Attendance at the ruler's majalis was open to men of all status levels. At lower social levels neighbourhood majalis welcomed those living in the quarter and provided opportunities for social mixing, discussion and learning which have all but disappeared today.

Yet hospitality, while encouraging sociality, is offered to outsiders and strangers, potential enemies; and heritage may become little more than the reification of an impoverished invented tradition, reducing culture to routinized performance and hollow form. We discuss aspects of gahwa-related hospitality and heritage, its history and contemporary use and meanings in Abu Dhabi

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the complex intersection of policy and patrimony surrounding the construction of culinary heritage in Lyon. Considered the birthplace of French cuisine, Lyon provides an excellent case study of the heritigization of gastronomy and its use as an instrument of identity-building.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, a concerted effort between tourism boards, private funding bodies, and cultural organizations have produced a paradigmatic example of the partimonialization of culinary heritage Lyon, France. Often considered the birthplace of French gastronomy, Lyon as a city, boasts both historical ties to gastronomic excellence and a current thriving food culture, important for foreign tourism and local, regional, and national identity alike. A unique factor making Lyon an excellent case-study for the heritigization of gastronomy is it's position as forerunner of the four French "cities of gastronomy," which were selected and established following the inscription of the gastronomic meal of the French into UNESCO's list for intangible cultural heritage in 2010. In recent years, Lyon (through various endeavors of funding partners, patrimonial boards, governmental support, to name a few) has further promoted the heritage of it's traditional restaurants (bouchons) and local gastronomy, and has expanded it's food markets Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse. Significantly, in 2019 the city launched the Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie, a museum dedicated to the culinary heritage of the region, while a new UNESCO bid for intangible cultural heritage was initiated to inscribe the art of French butcher. In another approach, Lyon has also fostered different events such as the street food festival which engage, rather than exclude more diverse communities, contrary to the rather single-narrative hegemonic discourse surrounding French cuisine as a powerful culinary identity maker.

Paper short abstract:

The recent elitist "New Romanian Cuisine" movement builds food heritage and by doing so it revives and re-invents the local gastronomy while addressing longstanding anxieties around the lack of "creativity" and "authenticity" in a bottom-up process that articulates and negotiates identity.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation seeks to understand a recent culinary movement centred around re-traditionalising practices and recipes in high end restaurants that self-identify as the "New Romanian Cuisine." Drawing on the analysis of menus, material culture and hospitality practices in eight such restaurants in Bucharest, I describe that the "New Romanian Cuisine" is largely an elite gastronomic practice set in motion by repatriated Romanian chefs, determined to revive and re-invent the local gastronomy. They see themselves as a resistance movement to globalisation, recasting Romanian food as global "ethnic food", while simultaneously referencing multiculturalism. Through the New Romanian Cuisine, the young culinary elite addresses longstanding anxieties around the lack of "creativity", "authenticity" and fit with contemporary lifestyles. Building food heritage is entangled in tensions over deciding which ingredients to include and what to leave behind, as well as intense debates about what it means to be Romanian. The findings indicate that chefs see possible symbolic upgrades in recipes, practices and ingredients otherwise forgotten or ignored with the goal to affirm identity, to pursue national authenticity as ethnic food, and attract high-end clientele. Since heritage food is not an economy of scale but one of distinction, the cultural capital controlled by chefs and consumers is key in building such cuisine. This research contributes to deepening our understanding of how food heritigization articulates and negotiates identity and adds to the growing body of literature related to heritage research, including the re-invention of  traditions.

Paper short abstract:

The paper will problematize the festivalization of food traditions as well the social construction of localities trough the culinary heritage. I am introducing the notion of gastrolocalizm in order to reveal the processes and actors behind the food authentication.

Paper long abstract:

The paper aims to explore in a critical manner the specifics of food festivals in their Bulgarian context. I am questioning the role they play in the interpretation of the local culinary heritage and in the formation of a local gastronomic culture as well as how they became part of the regional policies for sustainable development. I am approaching food festivals as a new type of collective celebration and form of local (self) identification. I am tracing how food festivals became part of the process of uses of the cultural heritage studying the building of local identity and the development of the cultural tourism trough the regional branding. The paper will problematize the festivalization of food traditions as well the social construction of localities trough the culinary heritage. I am introducing the notion of gastrolocalism in order to reveal the processes and actors behind the food authentication. The paper aims at tracing the use of myths in the process of authentication of local food and their promotion by food related festivals. To understand the use of food festivals as connected to local identity, I explore how particular food has come to signify an authentic foodstuff, and how it has come to represent a taste of a particular place as its homeland. Home (or the locality) is thus interpreted as an imagined place, a place that surfaces by means of discourses made up of geographical indications that imply a process of meaning and myth-making

Paper short abstract:

In Macao, food heritage is a key lever to diversify tourist arrivals, cultural consumption and economic growth, as well as to nourish sentiments of local pride. At gastronomic events, spectacular political performances are displayed to reaffirm and legitimize post-colonial power in the public space.

Paper long abstract:

In 2017, Macao (China) has joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in the creative area of gastronomy. The successful application, led by the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture and accomplished by the local tourism stakeholders, has reinforced Macao as a cultural and heritage destination where food culture has become part of the cultural policies and food-related tourism, a market segment itself. There is today in Macao a broad consensus that gastronomy tourism can contribute to a responsible socio-economic development, to new job opportunities, and to the diversification of the city's wealth heavily reliant on the top gambling industry of the world which made it famous in the first place.

Macao's food potential for intercultural dialogue, exchange and the creation of fusion cuisines - such as secular Macanese culinary practices - while still preserving local identity, constitutes a significant part of the current political agenda. Merging public and private interests, government stakeholders are promoting a kind of mega-feast attractions that combine cultural heritage with Michelin star chefs, international cuisines, traditional culinary arts and the rise of sophisticated and cosmopolitan tourism segments like the gastronomic one.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Macao during the events of the '2018, Year of Gastronomy' initiative - the official kick-off of the UCCN four-year action plan - and on interviews with members of government institutions and Macanese community associations, this paper seeks to analyse the political discourses and performative acts that are fabricating a new identity for Macao having food as its spearhead.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the ways how Central Asian post-Soviet nationalisms inheriting the dual vision of local populations have been transmitted in the rhetoric of and about food on the Internet entering the global contest of sameness and difference within UNESCO/Guinness Records provided scene.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I analyze the ways how Central Asian nationalisms have been transmitted in the rhetoric of and about food on the Internet. I focus on the 'titular' nations of the post-Soviet Central Asia as a starting point for the further studies of food and identity correlation in this region. It is not simply the 'imagined community' I am looking at via the prism of food. I focus on the ways how food is talked about, and how these talks are linked to nations. I argue that on the Internet of and about Central Asia the food and cuisine have been directly connected to ideas of nation being brought to its centralities at the national food contests. Within the virtual touches to the known dishes people may now associate or dissociate themselves to nations beyond the necessity of contact: imagination became not only visually available but also has become simultaneously shareable within the globe. The argument is built within the survey into the Soviet construction of the notion of 'national cuisine', an overview of the discourses on the Internet, and on the national contests inscribing the two dishes to 'own' nations at the level of the Guinness World Records and the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. I finally argue, with the inclusion of their 'national dishes' onto the global stage Central Asia has officially inserted itself into the global 'contest of sameness and difference' (Appadurai 1990).

Paper short abstract:

The process of construction of Traditional Portuguese Cuisine was a gastronomic itinerary that counted on the contribution of people from all Portuguese regions. This work reflects social and cultural dimensions that coexist and are essential to the construction of local and national identities.

Paper long abstract:

In 1958, Maria de Lourdes Modesto began her career at Portuguese television broadcasts (RTP) and presented a pioneering program of Cooking in direct for 12 years. She was much influenced by French cuisine but the TV viewers asked for traditional Portuguese cuisine recipes and so it was launched the Portuguese Regional Cooking Contest in 1961 on television. Twenty years later, the thousand recipes collected were the basis of the book Traditional Portuguese Cuisine a great publishing success. In this study we analysed the process and the contribution of Traditional Portuguese Cuisine to the construction of Portuguese culinary identities and heritage. The process of constructing the narrative Traditional Portuguese Cuisine was a gastronomic itinerary that counted on the contribution of many people from all Portuguese regions and later was thoroughly standardized by the author. Television being a good means of communication played a decisive role in the collection and dissemination of the traditional recipes of families, regions and of a country emphasizing the importance of food as an element of collective identity. Applying an interpretive grid capable of highlighting its multidimensionality, it was concluded that the work reflects several social and cultural dimensions, combining the heritage of different cuisines, which coexist and are essential to the construction of the local and national culinary identities. The consecration of traditional Portuguese cuisine arose from the confrontation with the foreign kitchen, in articulation with the historical and social process of evolution and affirmation of national identity.