Tourism, culture and food : pastizzerias as a site for cultural brokerage

Abstract

This paper is written from a general anthropological perspective that food can be seen as a key to culture (cfr. Azzopardi & Clark 2005). Food habits differ noticeably between regions and form part of what people consider to be typical of their roots, their collective identities and themselves. Even the diet people claim to be the right one, contains traces of historical influences as well as complex contemporary international relations. Past and present are reflected in what people eat, like and think of as healthy or good food. (Parasecoli, 2007) Food cultural phenomena run through a certain circuit of culture that result in their meaning or ‘life story’. This “needs to be understood in relation to five major cultural processes: production, regulation, representation, identity and consumption” (Ashley et al. 2004). In this paper I will focus mainly on the last three processes.