Ensaio sobre a valorização da culinária tradicional local como estratégia identitária - territorial

Abstract

The geography of taste intends to investigate the relation feeding-society in the space perspective; it stops beyond the relation of the territory as production area, extending the vision on the cultural act of the feeding. The territory is the base for the development of a local culinary and, at the same time, the culinary prints symbolic markings of identification of the group. To appreciate and to consume definitive types of plates - and to forbid others - mark borders between identities cultures, therefore it configures territories. The social groups had been, throughout the time and in the space, wavering social and identitary relations to the act of feeding itself, creating embody culinary traditions in the construction of the origin myth. The valuation of the local culinary consists in an effective identitária strategy of these groups, affirming its conditions of existence and survival. Nowadays, to consume plates identified with typical alimentary and culinary cultures of specific groups can be read as to consume symbols of authentic identities. If on the other hand this consumption divert of the idea of the typical food as pertaining celebration of the meeting between the same identity, for another one the visibility of the product in the market guarantees to the group beyond a form of economic insertion in the global market, one to articulate politician who makes possible the claim of exclusiveness to the access and use to the territory of the production. Thus the valuation of the culinary if not only constitutes in a economic strategy, but also in a identitary and territorial strategy.