Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on contested aspects of regional food heritage and regional inequalities, focusing on heritagisation of food in the Estonian Inventory of ICH. We will discuss this issue on both the state and local levels and in the context of contemporary interpretations of food heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is a recent heritage regime established in 2003 in order to raise public awareness about the importance of intangible cultural phenomena. According to UNESCO, knowledge, skills, practices, rituals and festive events related to food production and consumption in a particular community are the intangible part of edible heritage. In our paper we focus on contested aspects of regional food heritage and regional inequalities at the nation-state level focusing on heritagisation of food in the Estonian Inventory of ICH.

Estonia joined the UNESCO ICH Convention in 2006 and established a national inventory of ICH in 2010. The principles behind the inventory encourage all communities and groups to contribute to the list with the inscriptions about their ICH. Currently ca 25 different food and drink-related phenomena have been described in the list but regions have been represented quite unequally. The concept of regional food itself is a contested term as it may be interpreted differently in diverse socio-political contexts. Heritagisation of regional food often creates competition and inequalities and is not happening just at the local level, but is shaped by international policies and global processes.

We will focus on the following issues:

- policies implemented by the state to facilitate the development of food regions and their heritage;

- diverse capacities of regional communities to deal with their food heritage

- challenges of modern urban lifestyle and consumption habits upon traditional regional foods; local food replacing traditional regional food.