No se Tienen Delimitados los Predios Baldíos 145 

Academic efforts to understand people’s food and travel behaviour have often been based upon dichotomies – opposing categories that endeavour to

describe the key axes around which decisions are made. For example, in relation to food, Warde (1997) has argued that we make our choices on the basis of what he calls the ‘four antinomies of taste’: novelty and tradition, convenience and care, health and indulgence, and economy and

extravagance. These antinomies describe how attitudes to food vary, both between individuals and through time. For example, Warde’s analysis of the recipe columns in women’s magazines revealed that, although a recipe might be recommended one week on the basis that it was cheap and convenient to prepare – thus placing this meal firmly towards the economy and convenience ends of the spectra – another issue might suggest a different dish as a way to spoil your family on a special occasion – hence bringing extravagance and care to the forefront.

However, Warde’s research also shows that food choices are underlain by implicit moral judgements about the way things ‘should’ be. As a result, he argues that people tend to display somewhat ambivalent attitudes to the antinomies by switching between them at different times. For example, while women’s magazines were quick to promote convenience foods and labour- saving devices on some occasions, Warde found that they would also emphasise the importance of being a good wife and mother – a job which, when ‘done properly’, was seen to involve time and effort spent cooking complex and ‘proper’ meals for the family. Similar ideas also recur in Warde’s later work with Martens (2000) where, although interviewees said they liked to indulge when eating out – with many saying that they ate more on such

occasions than they would do at home – they also confessed to feeling guilty about such indulgences, with some claiming to eat less the following day as compensation.

It is also possible to see evidence of similar judgements operating in tourism where morality has played a central role in the distinction between ‘the traveller’ and ‘the tourist’. Rojek (1993) describes how, in the travel literature of the late 19th and 20th centuries: “Tourists are presented as lacking initiative and discrimination. They are unadventurous, unimaginative and insipid. For them, travel experience is akin to grazing – they mechanically consume whatever the tour operator feeds them.” However, by contrast: “The traveller is associated with refined values of discernment, respect and taste. Travel is seen as pursuing the ageless aristocratic principle of broadening the mind” (Rojek, 1993 p.175). Such judgements stem from the so-called ‘Grand Tours’ of the Enlightenment, when travel provided a means for members of the aristocracy to spend long periods of time in Europe. These tours were all about education, with a strong focus on art and literature and the goal of accumulating as much cultural capital as possible. Travelling in this way was considered to be part of learning to be a gentleman. However, you also had to be a gentleman already in order to appreciate the experience because travel, according to popular belief, was wasted upon the ‘lower classes’.

Rojek (1993) explains how such attitudes persist today, with tourists being classified as irresponsible, passive pleasure-seekers who demonstrate no personal initiative. He draws on ideas of the post-tourist (Urry, 1995) to argue that this judgement is not necessarily fair, because many tourists are aware of the staged nature of tourist experiences and are perfectly capable of being critical about what they see. However, it could also be argued that class judgements can be linked to one’s eating practices. Just as those who indulge

in mass package holidays are scorned, so are the visitors who demand fish- and-chips with lager while holidaying in Tenerife – the subtext being that a ‘better class’ of traveller would opt to eat the local food of the destination instead.

Such moral judgements relate to the ways in which we position ourselves in the world. As a result, they can be linked to another dichotomy that has been prevalent within the tourism literature – namely the distinction between

‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. Bourdieu (1984) emphasises that we define ourselves in opposition to others – we know what we are, or aspire to become, because we know what we are not. We can therefore define

ourselves, firstly, by where we holiday and, secondly, by how we eat when we get there, and the same can apply to our eating out practices at home. As Germann Molz (2004) explains in her study of Americans choosing to dine out in Thai restaurants:

“The meaning making that occurs in a tourist site has more to do with the self than the other. The tourist’s project is to understand and locate the self, and this project often takes place in relation to the other… Not only can the notion of exotic be defined only against what the tourist

understands as everyday, but any experience of the other is necessarily viewed through the tourist’s own historically and culturally located lens. Sometimes an encounter with the other is needed to bring the tourist’s own cultural identity into better focus. This is what occurs in Thai

really validating their own individual identity and affiliating themselves with a particularly American identity” (Germann Molz, 2004 p.66).

This example also serves to illustrate the way in which “our perceptions of an other are uniquely our own” (Long, 2004b p.34). Therefore what counts as an ‘exotic’ food or holiday destination – and equally who is an insider and who is an outsider in any given situation – is dependent on our own history of

experiences, and these categories can be redefined in response to events.

A similar point can be made in relation to a further dichotomy which has become instrumental within the food and tourism literature – that of the contrast between the ‘different’ and the ‘familiar’. For example, Ryan (2002a) asks the question of what it is that makes holidays so potentially special, and concludes that a crucial factor is the way they encourage reflection by placing us in situations that are removed from those of everyday life. Urry also claims that “Tourism results from a basic binary division between the

ordinary/everyday and the extraordinary” (Urry, 1990 p.11). Such arguments suggest that, in order to fully understand a person’s holiday behaviour, tourism researchers should reflect, not only on that person’s holiday activities and feelings, but also on how those experiences compare to life back home.

“While the life changing experiences of a Shirley Valentine are not the norm, one cannot help asking the question, what is it about holidays that can potentially cause such change? In what ways do these periods of escape allow people to examine themselves and come to such drastic

decisions? And… surely such a circumstance only has meaning in the wider context of the non-holiday daily life of people?” (Ryan, 2002b p.3).

Both the food and the tourism literatures have therefore focused on the question of how people respond to the familiar and the different, the safe and the adventurous. For example, Plog’s (1974) attempt to establish why some people were flying while others were not resulted in a distinction between the psychocentric person – who is inclined to be nervous and who prefers safer, more predictable travel experiences – and the allocentric person, who is self- confident and adventurous in everyday life and who prefers different holidays involving new experiences. Cohen (1972) also explained that, while a certain degree of novelty is an essential part of the tourist experience, not everyone is willing to expose themselves to what can seem different and strange – hence the need for an ‘environmental bubble’ which will afford some degree of security for the tourist through which he or she can appreciate a selection of controlled differences without feeling intimidated.

In relation to food, Fischler (1988) also distinguishes between people with ‘neophobic’ and ‘neophilic’ tastes in order to describe how willing – or

otherwise – they are to try new foods, and this is a concept that is developed by Cohen and Avieli (2004) in a paper which emphasises that holiday foods and drinks can be an impediment as well as an attraction for visitors. The authors explain that their paper was motivated by their observations of

delegates while attending a local food and tourism conference that was held in Cyprus in 2000.

“A quick survey among the participants revealed that most of the

participants did not eat independently even once in a local restaurant that was not tourism-oriented. Clearly, even for experts in the field, ‘local food’ becomes acceptable only if it is to some extent transformed” (Cohen and Avieli, 2004 p.756).

Cohen and Avieli go on to explain that food can be a source of real anxiety for visitors while on holiday because, unlike the traditional practice of gazing, which involves minimal bodily involvement with the surroundings, grazing involves a much higher level of risk because you are physically consuming something and, if it disagrees with you, the rest of your holiday could be spoilt. Such anxieties are not just created by the food itself – visitors can also be intimidated by unfamiliar social practices that surround eating, such as an absence of cutlery or the need to sit on the floor in a restaurant, or by

communication barriers such as the language used on the menu. The authors conclude that, if a tourism destination is to grow, it is essential to develop restaurants that go some way towards bridging the gap between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ so that tourists can feel more comfortable. For example, it might be wise to translate menus into a language that the visitor can understand,

reduce the spiciness of some dishes and replace what visitors may consider to be ‘unacceptable’ ingredients with alternatives. However, they argue that making such compromises is a delicate process because, if a place changes too much and is considered too ‘touristy’, visitors may avoid it on the grounds that it lacks authenticity (Section 2.10).

Indeed, when it comes to variety and difference, it appears that less is sometimes more. Warde and Martens (2000) found that some degree of difference from the norm was a crucial component of eating out. However, there also had to be some familiar aspects to the experience so that

customers knew what to expect. They discovered that the desire for variety could therefore be satisfied by a number of subtle changes – perhaps by dressing up to eat out, or the act of choosing to have a different sauce with your steak – even the fact that someone else has done the cooking and washing up can have an impact. In short:

“Variety can be simulated by events. Each event is different, unique in its temporal location, potentially distinctive and memorable precisely

because of its uniqueness” (Warde and Martens, 2000 p.218).

As these examples show, attempts to define ‘Self’ and ‘Other’, ‘traveller’ and ‘tourist’, or ‘different’ and ‘familiar’ are inevitably going to be subjective, with an individual’s responses depending on his or her prior experiences and cultural background. Such definitions can also change through time as we encounter new experiences that encourage us to reformulate our understandings of what is ‘normal’ or ‘usual’ and what is ‘extraordinary’ and ‘exotic’. A good example of the difficulties involved in such distinctions is Germann Molz’s study of round-the-world travellers’ attitudes to McDonald’s restaurants (Germann Molz, 2005). Like Warde (1997) discovered in his study of recipe columns in women’s magazines, Germann Molz found that travellers displayed

ambivalent responses towards McDonald’s that reflected their attitudes to globalisation more generally. This meant that the restaurants could be

welcomed as comforting and familiar reminders of home at the same time as they were despised for symbolising the worst aspects of trends towards global homogenisation. However, Germann Molz also discovered that travellers’ perceptions would change with their desires and circumstances, so that a visit to McDonald’s might seem unappealing the week after leaving home but be welcomed by the end of a long, round-the-world trip spent experiencing ‘different’ cultures. In short:

“McDonald’s is not inherently a global icon or a symbol of the local or an enclave of ‘homeliness’. Instead, the way these spatialisations and related emotions are performed in each traveller’s narrative depends on where the traveller comes from, on how far (geographically and

emotionally) from home the traveller feels, on how different or familiar the location seems to be, and on the traveller’s trajectory (where she is, has been, or wants to go)” (Germann Molz, 2005 p.66).

The preceding sections have highlighted a number of ways in which social relations are involved in the consumption of food and tourism services. However, in order to provide a further illustration of the importance of

understanding these social relations, the second part of this chapter extends the discussion by exploring some specific aspects of the literature that are relevant to this thesis – firstly, through a review of the literature that relates to wine tourism, secondly through an overview of theories relating to the

sociology of food consumption, thirdly through an analysis of the debate which surrounds the idea of ‘local’ food and the rise of ‘alternative food networks’ and, finally, through an examination of the role of authenticity within tourism.