Material matters: understanding ‘local food’ through a material-semiotic approach

Abstract

‘Local food’ plays a critical role in tourism destinations by attracting tourists and enhancing their experiences, thus indicating the need for researchers to examine how destinations can establish local food. Research has focused on the social and cultural construction of local food, but there have been limited inquiries into how the materiality of food is intertwined with human practices in the process. This perspective has hindered new insights into the becoming of local food in tourism destinations. This study conceptualises local food as an effect of an actor-network and investigates the dynamic and relational process of the becoming of local food in a tourism destination. In particular, this research selected Chaozhou beef food as a case and collected data through 49 on-site semi-structured interviews, in-situ observations and secondary data. The results reveal that the becoming of Chaozhou’s local food is due to the entanglement of both human actors, including tourists, artisans in slaughterhouses and staff in restaurants, and non-human actors such as the media, chain restaurants specialising in beef, tourism attractions and the beef itself. Further, the results reveal that the materiality of beef, namely the features of biochemical change and the morphological structure of beef, shapes the slaughterhouses’ and restaurants’ production and the tourists’ consumption of beef. Thus, the agency of material should be considered in the construction and sustainability of local food in tourism destinations.

Keywords:

• Local food
• food tourism
• actor-network theory
• ordering effect
• materiality
• tourism destination

Acknowledgement

Thanks Xiaojie Lin, Wei Lu and Rongpei Cao for their work in collecting and organising data. Besides, we would like to thank Prof. Xiaoming Zhang, Prof. Jie Li, Prof. Xiaofei Hao and Prof. Xiaojuan Yu for their comments and advice on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number [42271242]).

Notes on contributors

Xuehong Xiao

Xuehong Xiao is a doctoral candidate in the school of tourism management at sun yat-sen university. his research interests include sustainable tourism and material turn in tourism.

Congping Li

Congping Li is a phd student in the department of geography and planning at the university of toronto. she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the department of tourism management and planning at sun yat-sen university. her research interests focus on the impacts of urban environments on mental well-being, especially how environmental exposures and individuals’ perception of these exposures affect physical activity and mental health.

Honggang Xu

Honggang Xu is a professor in the school of tourism management at sun yat-sen university. her research interests include tourism geography, tourist management, sustainable tourism and mobilities.