Cuisine: a new concept for analysing tourism-agriculture linkages?

ABSTRACT

Linking food producers and tourism for the benefit of local communities in developing countries has been on the research agenda since the early 1980s. Scholars have elaborated on why linkages rarely fully materialise and they have identified a multitude of factors. Despite ‘local food’ enthusiasm amongst consumers, little has changed in how the tourism industry in developing countries procures food. Mostly, these linkages have been analysed from the common demand-and-supply standpoint. While this approach is valuable for investigating food chains in general, the concept of cuisine is proposed as a more holistic alternative that embeds an economic viewpoint into the cultural context. If tourism is to be used as a mechanism for sustainable development, then tools of analysis need to be chosen accordingly. Rather than relying solely on economic logic, we propose to also examine broader cultural and social factors through the lens of cuisine. This puts kitchen chefs, and possibly other hotel managers, who negotiate the space between guests’ expectations, food supply and cultural heritage, at the centre of attention. Based on ethnographic field research by the first author, a case study of tourism-agriculture linkages in Fiji illustrates the value of the concept of cuisine.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• agriculture
• hospitality
• cuisine
• culture
• sustainable development

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Tracy Berno, Emma Hughes, Natalie Slade and Heidi van der Watt for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The first author gratefully acknowledges funding from a Doctorate Scholarship from Massey University, New Zealand.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Gabriel Laeis lectures on topics of hospitality and tourism management at IUBH International University. He worked for a range of restaurants, hotels and consulting companies, holds an MSc in organic agriculture and food systems as well as a PhD in development studies. Gabriel’s research focusses on the interface of food production and sustainable tourism development. He has recently competed a research project on the linkages between large internationally managed resorts and small-scale farmers in Fiji.

Regina Scheyvens is Professor of Development Studies at Massey University, where she combines a passion for teaching about international development with research on tourism and sustainable development. Regina has published broadly on themes such as backpacker tourism, tourism in small island states, ecotourism, empowerment and sustainable tourism in a wide range of tourism and development studies journals. The South Pacific is the main focus of Regina’s research.

Carolyn Morris is a senior lecturer in cultural anthropology at Massey University. Her research and teaching interests are in cultures of agriculture and the politics of food. She works in Aotearoa New Zealand, and has interests in ethnicity, gender, rurality and race relations. Carolyn’s current research interests are focused on the making of markets and the processes of food innovation.

Notes

1 As of 1878, British colonial rule brought indentured labourers from India to Fiji to work on sugar cane plantations. Their descendants as well as other immigrants from India made up about 37% of the Fijian population in the 2007 census (Donnelly, Quanchi, & Kerr, 1994; Fiji Bureau of Statistics, 2018a).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Massey University [grant number Doctorate Scholarship].