What is culinary heritage?
I’m supposed to know something about culinary heritage. Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage is the subtitle of the book I published in the 1990s on the extraordinary foods of the Islands. I’d like to say that I had pondered long and hard over the title. The truth is that “culinary heritage” just sounded better than alternatives such as culinary history or (worse) the history of Hawaii’s food.
And next month I am slated to give a keynote address on culinary heritage during Panama Gastronomica, in Panama City in front of chefs from across Latin America (a great-sounding conference, by the way).
So I’ve been trying to get my thoughts about culinary heritage in order. By sheer good luck Gloria Lopez Morales gave a presentation a couple of weeks ago to the monthly Seminario de Alimentacion of the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas at the UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico), Mexico’s premier university. For years she worked for UNESCO, helping to develop the intangible cultural heritage program. And for the past half dozen years, she has spear headed the effort to have Mexican cuisine declared an intangible cultural heritage.
To anticipate, I have problems with her analysis of culinary heritage and I’ll come to those in another post. The talk, though, was a great way to jump start my thinking. Gloria Lopez is a splendid presenter, crisp, informed, and to the point. She has thought long and hard about culinary heritage. And I was fascinated by the way she laid out her case. Nothing woolly or misty eyed here. She had two main points.
1. Intangible cultural heritage is designed to induce economic development, particularly tourism.
She described how she was with UNESCO in Cuba in the 1980s when the economy was at a particularly low state. That, and the fact that income from tourism formed the largest part of GNP in a significant number of the world’s countries, made her and other officials at UNESCO rethink the idea that development depended on material resources such minerals or agricultural land. Economic development could also follow from promoting a country’s cultural heritage.
At first this meant identifying important buildings or groups of buildings or natural features (Havana, Guanajuato where I used to live, Yosemite etc.). These “patrimonios de la humanidad” don’t seem to me to have a huge amount of visibility in the United States but they certainly do in Mexico and many other countries. I’ve never seen any figures on whether they increase tourism but clearly they are widely believed to do so.
Next step. Tourists don’t want just monuments, natural or manmade, they want experiences. Hence UNESCO decided to set up this other category of immaterial cultural heritage. Gloria Lopez repeated several times that the culture in question was not to be limited to (or perhaps not even to include) European-style high culture, Goethe being one example she gave. It was to emphasize dance, folk art, and even cuisine. Here’s a list of already-approved immaterial heritages at the UNESCO site where tango jostles with vedic chanting and Chinese paper-cut.
Mexico wants to include cuisine. (So too does France). One proposal was submitted in 2005 but not accepted at the time. Here’s an account in Spanish of the 2005 round. There’s another proposal under consideration at this very moment.
2. What is being submitted as Mexico’s culinary heritage is a tradition said to stretch back 3000 years of dishes based on maize, beans and chiles, as exemplified by the rural cuisine of Michoacan. Words such as old, authentic, community-based kept cropping up. Gloria Lopez did not distribute the written proposal but she did show the ten-minute video prepared for UNESCO. It was professional production and for me a side of Mexico that I have seen only in books and magazines, although I have lived here for fifteen years. Lots of native costumes, lots of rituals, lots and lots of brilliant color, lots of dancing.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been mulling over her two points (1) that the point of preserving or promoting culinary heritage is to increase tourism and (2) that culinary heritage should be conceived as identifying the oldest cuisine of the area, the cuisine of the peasants, the cuisine supported by small scale agriculture. I understand that Gloria Lopez was working within the constraints of UNESCO rules.
I however am not. And thus I think it worth considering other reasons for taking culinary heritage seriously and other ways of conceiving culinary heritage. I’ll post my thoughts soon and would love reactions.
Ciao. Great post, very thought provoking.
I don’t think I’m going to far out on a limb to say that Italy has a culinary heritage, although its roots are certainly regional (Toscana, Piedmonte, etc) than national.
But, in general, each region takes great pride in their cuisine, and it does not seem to come from a place of wanting to increase tourism. There is a very genuine pride and desire to keep alive their culinary traditions.
I need to fully think through what you are saying, but I do believe there is more to it than making some money off of tourists.
Good to hear from you Judith. Italy is an interesting case because it’s such a new nation, and because so much of the cuisine has been invented/revived so recently, and because of the role of migrants.
Mi inglés es muy bueno leyendo y escuchando, regular hablando y muy malo escribiendo asi que te escribiré en Español que después de 15 años estoy segura dominas.
Yo creo que la cocina tradicional conviene rescatarla no solo por razones turísticas que son mas que válidas.
Incluso concuerdo contigo en la medida que pienso que México desperdicia su vocación turística para el desarrollo pleno. Siendo entre otros muchos atractivos la gastronomía uno.
Pero el rescate etnogastronómico tiene también razones de salud pública y genéticas como sucede con el alcohol y la diabetes en los indios de las reservaciones americanas.
Ha sido el cambio evolutivo y cultural que nos ha hecho modificar la dieta, asi como la globlalización y es evidente por la problemática de salud pública que hoy significa la obesidad en México , que tenemos que rescatar nuestras tradiciones alimentarias.
No conozco a fondo tu trabajo pero agradezco como mexicana el interés que te despierta.
Me pongoa tus órdenes para reproducir en vivo y hands-on una clase de cocina prehispánica como el del video de Gloria López Morales. Pero a solo hora y media del DF con tus manos con mi guia.
saludos cordiales,
Que gusto conocerte en “cyber space” Adriana. Claro, tu trabajo en Malinalco es famoso. Me parece muy interesante la idea de que tenemos que rescatar la cocina tradicional por motivos de salud. Voy a hacer unos comentarios sobre esta tema en el blog. Y estaremos en contacto con respecto a una visita. Muchos saludos, Rachel
It is interesting to see how the concept of “national dishes” evolves over time. Looking at say Scottish national dishes in the 19th century, some are still recognized as such now, but others are no longer made and some “classic” dishes are of quite recent origin. This certainly isn’t limited to Scotland.
An issue that I have is that at least one motivation for the protection of national dishes is basically just racism. Look at the recent Italian “Si alla polenta, no al cous cous” debacle (see link below). By demanding “authentic”, what often is delivered is a banal, homogeneous and myopic view of a regions history.
http://www.i-italy.org/13883/polenta-vs-cous-cous-legally-banning-ethnic-food-northern-italy
Agree about both points. In fact, I think probably most national dishes are of recent origin and I think you do too.
The cous cous/polenta case in Italy was fascinating. Scarcely surprising after all the hoopla about local, terroir, preserving traditions, and so on that the rhetoric was turned to political ends distressing to the inventors of that rhetoric.
Adam, that is one strange article. Did you read through to the comments? Bizarre to say the least. Racism always seems to find a way to bubble to the top.
Recently I read that Italy also banned Molecular Gastronomy. I would have loved to be in on that meeting where they decided on a definition of Molecular Gastronomy.
J
Rachel, listening to your description of the video to promote the Mexican cultural/culinary experience, I was reminded of the ubiquitous hotel luau in Hawaii and thought that this video might be a harbinger of that scenario, played out in Mexican style.
THX, Adam, for the interesting link. The fact that most polenta today is made from corn, which only recently arrived in Italy, strengthens the argument that the slogan was inspired by racial rather than regional or historical biases. Corn comes from an acceptable outside source — cous-cous does not.
The hotel luau is a just wonderful case of the pitfalls of culinary tourism. Not just Hawaii. Some of the French wine societies were doing much the same thing at the same time. The invention of regional cuisines for tourists is at least a hundred years old. Steam and petrol brought the elite to the periphery where they wanted experiences. Fascinating.
And obviously couscous has a long tradition of been made in Italy (still is in Sicily and Sardinia). It was made by papal chefs in the Renaissance period and Italy’s first real cookbook (Artusi’s “La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene”) gives detailed instructions for how it is made in Florence by the Jewish community. The point is that this “Culinary Heritage”, is not the point in this particular use of food as a way of defining your own people and the stranger.
It is worth pointing out that the various geographic protection measures that are used in Europe are largely about commercial protection as much as protecting culinary heritage. I haven’t got too much of a problem with this, other then with those that say that this isn’t the case.
Need to look at Artusi again, Adam. I’d forgotten that he dealt with cous cous.
Absolutely, the geographical protection measures are commercial. And the French attempt to recover after phylloxera sparked it all.
Ciao. Just checking back in, and as always the discussion is intriguing.
Rachel, I’m not sure I agree with you. Yes, Italy is a new nation, but the various regions of Italy hold their culinary heritage very near and dear to their stomachs. “Italian” cuisine is a very handy term for marketing and branding the food that goes on here, but the culinary heritage is ancient and regional (Tuscan or Umbrian instead of italian) and still alive.
You inspired my blog post of today and now you have me wondering if the regional culinary heritage is a prison or a platform.
Great topic for thought…wish I could make it to this symposium.
Italians are proud of there regional cuisines, but this doesn’t mean that these regional cuisine and diets isn’t dynamic. There is also a difference between being able to demonstrate cultural continuity and legitimizing cultural inertia. Even in the case where continuity of a dish or an ingredient is demonstrable, this doesn’t mean the diet is. In Tuscany people don’t have the same diet as their grandparents and certainly not of their grandparent’s grandparents. This isn’t a huge period of time. Beginning of the 21st century to the 19th century. Fast days and fish consumption? Huge increase in the consumption of dried pasta? Uptake of the tomato in the diet to thicken and flavour sauces etc.
In some ways it is a great shame that the records of regional and national diets are not more accessible. In England 1962 was the year that the average household ate more chicken then white fish. This means that people of my mothers generation (born in the ’40’s) ate a very different diet to what I have experienced as a child, even though the individual ingredients and dishes may not have changed that much in to the 1970’s (my childhood). I don’t think this is specific to my family or point of origin.
A really good example of culture providing economic regeneration via tourism is the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. What really interested me when I was there a few years back was to hear how the architect, Frank Gehry, designed the museum to include and encompass the city within its design. So from the beginning the museum was intimately linked with the city.
Whether you could do the same with food is interesting and challenging. Certainly most Europeans – or the English at least – and I suspect most Americans too have a very limited and stereotyped idea of Mexican food, so anything that promotes its richness and diversity can only be a good thing.
And a salsa of chiles habaneros is definitely an experience., rather than a monument
Rachel et all,
The other important piece in this puzzle is that material or immaterial heritage causes, is that those should be endangered. Many different reasons could be the causes of the extinction of the matters. So, support from the local government and the UNESCO is mandatory. In this situations “support” is money.
Oh, Iliana, we need to sit down over coffee to thrash out all these issues. I’m not sure everything has to be preserved (lots of cuisines have disappeared), I’m not sure who is responsible for preserving them, I’m not sure this is something UNESCO should be dabbling in, I’m not sure how the money will be used. Lots and lots of questions.
I do not mean preserve as to preserve a painting, rather as a form of evolution; I think it will be very sad if soon we will not find good chiles, or moles…. “if ” the money is used to protect ingredients form vanishing in the air, and delicious cooking practices I am not against, even I also have many questions around all this….
I think evolving uses is the key.
Hi Rachel,
You say you’ll develop further your thoughts on culinary preservation and on Gloria’s ideas on another post. Have you done so? I couldn’t find anything but would love to know them.
Here’s a link to a place where I am critical of culinary preservation.http://zesterdaily.com/cooking/unesco-culinary-heritage/
Thanks for your interest.
Hi Rachel,
Mabuhay from the Philippines…
read your blog and wish to work with you on this study or maybe know more of yours, since I am currently doing my thesis paper on preserving time honored restaurants here in Binondo, Manila known to be the world’s oldest Chinatown. One of which in my research is Culinary Heritage wherein I am gathering data on how Chinese foodways influences our locals and by some thoughts that you may give ideas and techniques and suggestions too..
Thanks much!
Good to meet you Liwanag. Please email me directly (rachel@rachellaudan.com) and we can talk further about culinary heritage. I would love to know more about Binondo.