Aims and context of research:

Food tourism development addresses the challenges of rural regeneration, agricultural diversification and the emergence of closer relationships between production and consumption. Food and beverage constitute approximately one-third of total tourist expenditure and have become distinct sectors in the tourism industry. Food is providing a ‘keystone’ from which to construct a destination’s marketing strategy. The World Travel Market recently recognised that “food tourism is on the boil like never before, holiday makers are choosing where they go by what they can put into their stomachs…food tourism today is where eco tourism was 20 years ago”. This growth is attributable to an increasing consumer anxiety about food in the light of recent farming crises in combination with concerns over genetically-modified foodstuffs, food mileage, homogenisation, steep export prices, and loss of local food identities. In this climate, consumers are turning to local foods and small-scale food producers are becoming a significant industry group. Rural areas are attracting particular attention and have received significant injections of funding to bolster rural economies and meet new policy objectives.

Food tourism is also a multifaceted research area gaining prominence from the fringes of academic research to the forefront of geographical and sociological theory and policy. However, there is a paucity of research from a cultural and multidisciplinary perspective. Consequently, the thesis is situated at the cutting-edge of tourism research by engaging with current academic trends. It embraces spatial, social and cultural dimensions which problematise orthodox positivistic analyses. The aims of this research are to: i.) conduct an in-depth study of food tourism; ii.) develop geographical and tourism discourses by engaging with innovative theoretical approaches; iii.) examine the relationships between identity, peripherality and food tourism through investigation; iv.) explore and examine the way place is presented, performed and promoted through its food.

Summary of progress to date:

The PhD began in October 2005 and will be completed by July 2008 with examination viva in September 2008. In addition to a multidisciplinary literature review, data have been generated from 10 weeks of field research in 6 areas in Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall and in-depth interviews with 34 tourist and 32 producers.

Food tourism is fuelled by a search for peripherality as a reaction to globalisation and standardisation. ‘Escape’ is complex; where spatial practices combined with visual and verbal ‘representations of space’ to create a constructed ‘sense of place’. It involves engagement in counter behaviour and a temporary inversion of consumptive practices. These spaces are culturally-produced where there is a crossing into something different from everyday life; achieved through unusual consumptive activity. There are mutually-informing spatial constructs built to meet a growing demand and spaces come alive through close producer/consumer interaction.

Centralised regulation was believed to be suffocating local food development. Evidence of the mutual constitution of social alterity and a desire to actively resist external strategies was found. Producers felt pushed to the margins by powerful economic interests and centralised power sources. Through creative ‘tactics of resistance’, there is a temporary escape from ‘administered lives’. Acts of social resistance were characterised by shifting interpretations and development of social networks.

Finally, landscapes of non representable resistances are created. ‘Cultural resistance’ challenges a powerful hegemonic system that is seemingly devoid of character. Places are activated through immersive bodily expression as producers encode passion into food products. Such values are then decoded by engaged consumers. Although food practices appear to have the capacity for spontaneity, they are often pre-determined. However, there is a paradoxical situation where food tourism experiences are often diluted. Rather than immersing oneself in sensory experiences there is a blurring of postmodern forms of embodied tourism experience.