Dr. Elitsa Stoilova will present her research proposal on the topic: "Tradition and Innovation: Valorizing the Authentic Food" on 27 October 2016 (Thursday) at 16:30h at CAS Conference Hall

Summary:

The project aims to explore in a critical manner food and drinks related festivals in Bulgarian context. I will question the very process of valuation of food and food technologies as genuine for certain region in order to grasp how local identity is created through food authentication. The research will be limited to а comparative study of the food related festivals on the territory of the South-Central Planning Region. Its geographical, cultural, and economic diversity offers a richness of case studies, and different strategies for (re)invention of traditions and their use for sustainable development.
Since the 2000s several Bulgarian small cities and villages initiated celebration of rural food products and pre-industrial technologies for food production and agriculture. In 2014 Bulgarian food related festivals are already very popular and fast growing form of promotion local culinary traditions and technological know-how. In order to popularize and prevent their local foods more than 30 small towns and villages organize such events all over the country. Some of them are already proved to be vital becoming crucial part of local cultural calendar. Those dedicated to diverse food products festivals are appropriating elements form traditional feasts, fête of the city or village, as well as new and innovative elements of collective celebration and local identity promotion. Bulgaria is not an exception in that rapid development of locally organized appearances honouring food authenticity, but rather follows the global patterns. Since 1970s food-related events are growing rapidly worldwide rising in numbers over the last decades.
In first glance food festivals might be considered as an external promotion of traditions to national and international visitors. A review of the literature dedicated to that phenomenon shows they are a representation of community senses of place and "pride in the products that they produce" (Hall and Sharples 2008, 5). Investigation of those events shows they are not simple example of how the community of specific location consumes and produce food, but they represent the very maintenance of those communities. (Hall and Sharples, McClincheya 2008, Bessière 1998).
As a resent phenomenon for Bulgarian society food festivals are interesting from historical and anthropological perspective. Their specificity, I will argue, is that they are simultaneously traditional and innovative in their nature. Food related festivals in Bulgaria incorporate the traditions of rural festivity combining them with diverse forms of local and national celebration inherited from the socialist regime. In a way they promote local products and sustainability, they might be considered as anti-global. Controversially, attracting alternative, culinary, or rural tourism they became part of globalization processes. Following the diverse actors (local governments, local community, producers, visitors, tourist agencies, and other) will lead to divergent stories. In order to trace the process of food authentication, and construction and popularization of local food brands, the local actors and local politics will be studied. The project aims at grasping that complicated nature of food related festivity that requires an interdisciplinary approach that will crossover anthropology, food studies, history of technology and agriculture, marketing and tourism studies.
A research on the local specificities of food related festivals will represent how food related festivals connect authentic products and specific locality. Studying different case studies project objective is to trace how different actors construct the idea of authenticity, how values in place are embodied, values that mark it as the authentic "home" of a specific food. To explore these issues, the project will ask the following questions: Which actors are driving those processes and how the claims of authenticity claims are justified? How are "traditional" food products involved in creating a local identity? The analysis will focus on the authentication of food by addressing its various political, economic, social, cultural, and symbolic dimensions.
To answer to the research questions set above I am useing various sources. In-depth interview will be used as a main source of information regarding festival specificities and local representation of authenticity. Organizers of the festivals, local authorities, local producers, and citizens will be questioned. The creation of a particular image of a product is part of its authentication. Audio-visual and digital materials related to promotion and advertisement of the events will show the contexts embodied. Other documentation related to events organization such as programs, scenarios, press communicates, participation and visitors statistics will be researched.