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- Convenors:
-
Michele Fontefrancesco
(Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)
Dauro Mattia Zocchi (Università di Scienze Gastronomiche)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 14 University Square (UQ), 01/007
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Over the last two decades, growing attention has been paid to food heritage. This ingenerated a process of heritization that entails challenges crucial for anthropology. The panel invites ethnographic and methodological papers that investigate this process of heritization and its consequences.
Long Abstract:
Over the last two decades, growing attention has been paid to the recognition of food as an element of intangible cultural heritage, given its importance as an identity marker and its potentially crucial role in fostering the economic, political, and social empowerment of local communities. In the wake of this phenomenon, several organizations across the world have developed and promoted research activities and dissemination tools aimed at documenting and promoting biocultural diversity linked to traditional food and gastronomic systems. These initiatives often seek to improve knowledge of resources linked to food and gastronomic milieus and also, possibly, to foster processes towards their rescue and promotion.
Overall, thus, food is the subject of a multi-layered process of heritagization that entails different challenges concerning socio-cultural and economic sustainability, commodification, and standardization of traditional knowledge. It also brings to the fore questions concerning indigenous intellectual rights, ethnic exploitation, and new forms of cultural and economic colonization: issues that have a significant impact in those geographical areas where the socio-economic and ecological conditions are more precarious and fragile.
The panel invites ethnographic and methodological papers that investigate the different stages of food heritagization and its consequences. Particular attention will be given to the design and making of food inventories and underlying methodologies, focusing on the impacts of these activities on communities and other local actors.
The panel is organized within the ERC project: DiGe - Ethnobotany of divided generations in the context of centralization.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper traces the processes through which Bulgarian lyutenitsa, a relish made from tomato and paprika, has been constituted as both a national and local heritage. It shows how the product has become an important resource for various players acquiring new cultural and economic importance.
Paper long abstract:
Culinary traditions are considered an important part of cultural heritage that unites people in national and local communities. Bulgarian lyutenitsa, a relish made from tomato and paprika, has been constituted as a national heritage through processes of commodification and standardization of traditional knowledge. During socialism, lyutenitsa was defined as a basic food product which was produced by state standards in big factories. The socialist product had neither logo, no name, but alluded through its label to Bulgarian folklore traditions. Following a similar line in labelling, post-socialist brands of lyutenitsa, borrow various ethnographic elements suggesting rural life and agrarian traditions. In this sense, the celebration of lyutenitsa as national culinary heritage can be viewed as part of Bulgarian socialist legacy. Meanwhile, the last decade has seen a process of locating the product as part of the local cultural history and heritage of the village of Kurtovo Konare, which is well-known for its local varieties of paprika and tomatoes. An annual culinary festival dedicated to the local culinary traditions is significant part of this process. In a relatively short period of time, lyutenitsa has become an important resource for local development projects through which it has acquired a new cultural and economic importance for the local community. Thus, lyutenitsa has been the subject of a multi-layered process of heritagization that involves various stakeholders.
Paper short abstract:
XXI century posed significant challenges to the universe and to its extremely important cultural heritage gastronomic culture. Georgia is a small post-soviet country but with fascinating and diverse gastronomic history, which needs to be revitalized, correctly positioned, and maintained.
Paper long abstract:
Gastronomic culture is the expression of a nation's self-identity, essence. The process of globalization has changed the world and along with it, many things alter in the field of gastronomic culture too and face the danger of vanishing. Dining culture, which is one of the characteristics of the nation's identity, and the majority of mankind constantly clings to this hook, is changing along with the attitude towards it. We can attribute the recent "Gastronomic Boom" to this. What the gastronomic culture, as a system consists of, why did the matter of gastronomic culture become so pressing lately, how the dining culture influenced the development of mankind, how understanding these matters will support gastronomic tourism as one of the image resources of the country, is the subject of the constant research and right positioning of the country.
This paper will discuss the gastronomic heritage of Georgia as an ancient civilization and post-soviet country, its place in the Caucasus, and UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. In such a small geographic area, each region has its own diverse and different cuisine and this is one of the many things which makes Georgia interesting.
In our paper, we will shortly explain how to preserve the biodiversity and the wealth left by our grandparents, with which our history is quite rich. We will also briefly describe how to document the gastronomic treasure that our ancestors have passed on to us.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the ‘heritagization’ of local cheeses in Kars, Northeastern Turkey. I focus on the ways in which small dairy farmers built alliances to enact sensory and scientific practices of “pasturing” dairy craft in their attempts to sustain rural livelihoods.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the ways in which small dairy farmers attempt to sustain rural livelihoods by certifying local cheeses as authentic products of intangible heritage in Kars, Northeastern Turkey. Territorial state politics of national security and “microbiopolitics” of food safety have shaped everyday practices of dairy farming and cheesemaking in this border province. Together with the foundation of a cheese ecomuseum in the Boğatepe village in 2010, farmers have built alliance with social and dairy scientists, government officials and activists in the certification of gravyer cheese as a Slow Food Presidium and kaşar cheese as a Geographical Indication in 2015. Dairy farmers’ involvement in the certification processes led the ‘pasture-milk’ to be recognized as a necessary ingredient of cheese. This did not only affect the dairy scientific research agenda on Kars cheeses in order to establish the link between the pastures, local-traditional techniques and the taste of pastures in the cheeses. It also made possible to sense everyday practices of agro-pastoralism in the cheese – contributing to the formation of a pasture-cheese sensorium. Based on my 18-month ethnographic research, I call this process "pasturing" and argue that it challenges the "pasteurization" of milk, places, grasslands, and dairy farming. Hence this paper analyzes the heritagization of local cheeses in Kars through practices of pasturing dairy craft. I suggest that small farmer participation in promoting food heritage enabled them to sustain agro-pastoral livelihoods and its more-than-human assemblages.