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