Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food and Drink

Priscilla Boniface

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351896054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Along with basic practical reasons, our practices concerning food and drink are driven by context and environment, belief and convention, aspiration and desire to display - in short, by culture. Similarly, culture guides how tourism is used and operates. This book examines food and drink tourism, as it is now and is likely to develop, through a cultural 'lens'. It asks: what is food and drink tourism, and why have food and drink provisions and information points become tourist destinations in their own right, rather than remaining among a number of tourism features and components? While it offers a range of international examples, the main focus is on food and drink tourism in the UK. What with the current diversification of tourism in rural areas, the increased popularity of this type of tourism in the UK, the series of BSE, vCJD and foot and mouth crises in British food production, and the cultural and ethnic fusion in British towns and cities, it makes a particularly rich place in which to explore this subject. The author concludes that the future of food and drink tourism lies in diversity and distinctiveness. In an era of globalisation, there is a particular desire to enjoy varied, rather than mono-cultural ambiance and experience. She also notes that there is an immediacy of gratification in food and drink consumption which has become a general requirement of contemporary society.

Chapter 1
Food and Drink, From Past to Present

Introduction

Background and Intent

Along with reasons of practicality and necessity, our practices concerning food and drink are driven by context and environment, belief and convention, aspiration and want to display. In short, lifeway – culture – is an integral element of how and what we eat and drink. Similarly, culture guides how tourism is used and operates (Boniface, 1998b, pp. 746–749). Therefore, this book in looking at food and drink tourism must accommodate and view culture’s role in the activity. To explore food and drink tourism is unavoidably to visit culture also. The thrust of the book is on food and drink tourism, as it is now and is likely to emerge and develop; and culture will be considered both as it makes cause and input to the endeavour now and as it might do henceforth. Nonetheless, our exploration and presentation needs some background about influences at work, formerly and currently.

The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to offer some modest general background and comment on those various ways of using food and drink connecting and inputting to the current scene and which in particular are influencing food and drink becoming tourism destinations. The next chapter will develop the portion of discussion which concerns how and why tourism should now so noticeably be adopting food and drink as main products and foci rather than only as usual and necessary tourism by-products. While, as has been said, culture will feature throughout the book, it is in these first two chapters that relevant theoretical aspects will be mentioned mostly, and both those concerning culture and sociology. This attention is as part of producing a framework for the practical manifestations and certain main example types to be addressed as topics in the book.

It is not an aim of this chapter to deliver a history of food and drink. Such is provided thoroughly elsewhere (e.g. Fernández-Armesto, 2001; Flandrin and Montanari, 2000; Kiple and Ornelas, 2000; Tannahill, 2002; Toussaint-Samat, 1994). Its purpose is to identify certain core strains of behaviour in relation to food and drink. Such strains are both similar and different in various parts of the world, a fact that seems to encourage tourism’s current adoption of food and drink as central objects. The intention is to pick upon key moments and attitudes during the historical period that seem to contribute significantly to the current food and drink tourism situation and its flavours of type.

In the Past

Travelling to Obtain Food

Food and drink connected with and used by human beings has delivered an overall entity of practice. This is that humankind gathers or cultivates food and drink materials, and prepares these for consumption. The standard process to obtain food and drink material in the past until around 8,000 bc (Harris, 1996, p. ix) was by hunting and gathering (and to certain groups it has stayed thus). It is interesting to observe that, albeit usually over a relatively small area, the process was essentially travelling for food and drink matter and so the action is a precursor – of kind, and in an interpretation – of food and drink tourism. The practice was, of course, however, concerned with obtaining sustenance rather than having any dimension of being leisure and pleasure activity and so a key feature that distinguishes tourism was not present. However, already heralded was an aspect, to be explored in this book, of the bridge and overlap dynamics between food and drink and its concerns being everyday entities but too matters to the leisure realm.

Agriculture’s Arrival

Farming’s introduction – as Harris says, around 10,000 years ago – was a massive and influential event. Only in North America did agriculture come considerably later at around the bc/ad changeover. The general shift – occurring at various individual times across the world – was momentous. Finding and collecting items of food and drink would, of course, have had its own ways – these conditioned by physical and attitudinal circumstances – but with the advent of food being farmed, a greater level of control and imposition was introduced. The experience to humankind of food being obtained from farming was in considerable contrast to the one – mainly at the mercy of externality and serendipity – which is basic to the character of hunting and gathering. What happened was that a much greater extent of possibility was offered than hitherto for humans to decide and make ways of food handling and using. Food’s arrival could be planned for and known in advance; a ritual and cycle came into place for food’s appearance; the very increased secure awareness that food would be manifest permitted time for more attention to be given to issues and circumstances surrounding the production and consumption of food; food’s types could be chosen, though, of course, this procedure was tempered by the limitations of local soil and climate conditions. A major change was that procedures for agriculture needed to be introduced. That there was a farming cycle, and including large periods of ‘wait’ while crops grew and ripened, meant that a group not only operated together and did certain things at same time, but had time on its hands and at same moment. Differing climate and landscape types lent themselves to differing and particular crops and so distinct farming cultural landscapes with their associated practices arrived and were set to progress and evolve on varying trajectories. A farmer also needed to stay put by his/her farmland, seeing its good order and husbandry, rather than wander as a nomad. All these events lent a situation for the development of a community-specific way of life and attitude in which custom had milieu for developing beyond what the basic features of immediacy and necessity cause to shape. A circumstance had been reached to allow the luxury of greater attention to the ceremony and meanings and methods associated with food and drink and their production and consumption. With farming’s arrival came too greater time and possibility than before to make a range of drinks and including alcoholic, mood altering, types. This lent further encouragement for food and drink being associated with, or used centrally for, celebration, festival, event and ritual (Luard, 2001). With abundance or surplus, food and drink could be chosen and used for making statements, such as those relating to politics, identity, status, gratitude, affluence and superiority, or joy at an occasion, and too for celebrating key moments in the agricultural cycle, and as have such been carried through to the present. With a definite and known cycle of production, it was possible to plan and so events orientated on food and drink could be scheduled ahead of time and their circumstances and format be positively organized.

How Culture Could Flourish and Diversify

The overall alteration just depicted was evolutionary not sudden and the phase happened at different times over the world. The generality was of a change of process from a life of subsistence and uncertainty being undergone to a life of some certainty of nourishment being experienced and with enough fallow time for leisure and developing ways of living as art. In short, the stage was set for culture in relation to food and drink to emerge as a more enriched entity and with more variety across the world due to various groups’ circumstances, dispositions and wishes. Now, food and drink production and consumption had more wide and greater opportunities for showing culture and for being linked in as cultural practices. As can be seen, already, 8,000–10,000 years or so back, a platform and circumstance had been laid for culture, food and drink, and tourism, to feature and interact together. An association had been laid for food and drink to concern pleasure and to be allied with the non-essentials of existence additional to those daily necessity demands. So food and drink was then, and so early in time, already in occupation of the pleasure periphery.

The Beginning of Food and Drink Tourism

Fernández-Armesto proposes six revolutions in the history of food. The first is cooking; the second is ‘the discovery that food is more than sustenance’ (2001, p. xv); the third is domesticating and breeding certain animals to eat; the fourth is growing plants to eat; the fifth is ‘the use of food as a means and index of social differentiation’; the sixth is the trade over long distance of foodstuffs and associated cultures (p. xvi); the seventh is the ecological exchange and moving happening due to European colonialization; the final one is developed world industrialization. It is clearly manifest that food and drink tourism has beginnings and impulses through time and from each of Fernández-Armesto’s defined revolutions. There are two critical elements. One is food and drink emerging as more than subsistence articles and becoming items attached to ritual and way that are more complex than before as a result. The other is material and idea being transferred. This book’s thesis, moreover and specially, is that a considerable counter-revolution against food industrialization has appeared and that this is a main trigger to food and drink tourism emerging. Further, the arguments are that tourism is providing a needed society outlet to these concerns and for which it is the chosen candidate due to tourism’s essence being travel and since tourism allows time of adequate attention to an item that in daily life is more difficult. Perhaps, a revolution number seven can be said as in process.

Society using Tourism

In effect, a society concern and interest is being explored and new styles of approach are being attempted through tourism as the medium. Modern tourism has helped the endeavour in two ways. First, in having needed to provide – to cater to mass tourism – new types of mass arena such as theme parks, resort complexes, airports (Pascoe, 2001), which are not bound by old cultural conventions, such fresh and hyper-industrialized entities have emerged to show size and inclusivity. So exclusivity and being ‘Un-tourist’ is the current prize of the minority (Birkett, 2002, pp. 6–7). Second, in offering spaces distant from home, tourism has delivered areas relatively light of usual cultural and personal baggage – albeit that the basic entities of food and drink occupy any whereabouts – and so these lend themselves to experimentation and new idea without interruption and intrusion from weight of home opinion. This second dimension to tourism is what renders its importance as a matter of general interest and worthy of studying. As an activity encompassing most daily life features, but these being used and chosen by the tourist by criteria of pleasure and without unwanted distractions needing to be present, tourism can be used for experimentation. Tourism is a laboratory for ‘real’, everyday, life. It provides pointers to how everyday life may change and become. It should be noted for its significance, that alongside the tourist who is occupying temporary leisure space for experimentation and who is present in ‘leisure time’ will be the host who is residing in ongoing everyday space and keeping to norm and habit and who is located in ‘everyday time’.

Influences from History

From the myriad events and happenings to food and drink items and connected with them through history, to be highlighted and discussed here below are those that seem to bear upon, herald and lead to food and drink tourism.

Environmental Connection

A first essential dimension is the connection to land, along with link to natural environment generally and relationship to climate. Until the industrialization period with the mass move to towns and cities, the sight of food and drink stuffs growing and familiarity with its processes were routine to people. To countries still developing, the intimacy with agriculture remains, but in the developed world this is not so generally. This has meant food and drink being rather distanced among modern society from being regarded as items linked to natural and agricultural processes and rather only seen in their roles of items for sustenance, and to use in link with celebration and ritual. Food and drink’s associations now, therefore, are less with effort and more with pleasure and indulgence, and this fits food and drink to be items of focus for that contemporary ritual and matter to be enjoyable, tourism.

Agriculture’s arrival brought larger groups of people together engaged in production, intensification, a propensity for states to be created, and the delivery of hot spots of strength such as the Nile Delta in contrast with others (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, pp. 28–29). A stage was set for places of expertise, and ascendancy of some over others, to emerge. The Mediterranean basin generally was an area naturally equipped for particular development and the Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations are testament to the dimension. This basin is also an area naturally advantaged for relatively short distance travel and goods and information exchange. As examples are these. Due to early being invaded by Greeks and Romans, Provence in France shows to this day strong Greek and Roman cultural presences. Similarly, from occupation by Muslims, southern Spain still manifests a Moorish (Islamic) cultural flavour as part of its make-up (Drysdale, 2001).

Quality Food

Another relevant dimension to which Beardsworth and Keil draw attention (p. 30) is the need for quality food to feed the brain adequately for it to think highly. So, a link is suggested as existing between best (most nutritional) food and capacity for most advanced development.

Religion and Knowledge

With centres of activity and organization arising, a circumstance is produced for practices and ways of thought in common to emerge as consequences and necessities. Group cultures emerge. Food and drink can be deployed to make corporate statement and display, to show distinction from others, and to manifest superiority over them. Type and distinctiveness of religion is one kind of main activity for which food and drink could be adopted. This is from the fundamental feature to Christianity of the Human Sacrament of bread and wine, to the privation from food of the fast, to religious days’ special feasting, and rites of fertility such as the Harvest Supper. Ground-lines of Western civilization to the present day have been much laid by Greek and Roman culture and with considerable movement across land and sea of plants and commodities of food and wine. With this, religious houses have played an enormous role in civilization’s march, as communities needing to maintain themselves and who overall have put a focus on developing knowledge. In the Western world, without these foci of information existing and developing – most especially in the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods – many food and drink items and certain food and drink production and preparation information would have been lost or not been able to increase.

Food Locations and Travels

A large generalization about material and knowledge of food and drink transfer is that this travel – maize, chocolate (Coe and Coe, 1996) and the potato being notable exceptions – has been from the (Near, Middle and Far) East to the West/North-West. Naturally, the world’s most productive growing regions have been where soil is good, water is available, and climate not extreme. Other necessary components are the presence of enough able-bodied people to produce crops and enough technological knowledge and expertise and suitable material to make implements. Animals would have been needed to provide traction for machinery – however rudimentary. This would be additional to their role as food material. For animal husbandry the circumstances needed are good feeding crops, with adequate expertise to care for animals, and – in a usual abandonment of nomadism – features to contain animals from uncontrolled roaming.

Authenticity, Individuality

Becoming delineated is the emergence of territories defined by and rooted in shared attitudes, ethics, values and procedures and so being recognizably distinct places. In full circle, these then require – for bettering survival – the presence of a same outlook and a boundary to be drawn around it and then the perspective presented to outsiders and competitors. To maintain distinctiveness and strength and to avoid copying and so danger of losing exclusivity and features for viability, a place and it...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Food and Drink, From Past to Present
• 2 Food and Drink Become a Leisure Destination
• 3 Food for Thought and Visit
• 4 Ripe Time for Providers
• 5 Initiative and Opinion
• 6 Production and Display Centres and Venues
• 7 Outlets and Markets
• 8 Accommodation
• 9 Feeding and Drinking
• 10 Special Events and Devices, and Resources for Education
• 11 The Wine Dimension
• 12 From Among the Cornucopia
• 13 The Crop Now, and For Sowing in Future
• Bibliography
• Index