Consuming the "authentic": globalized nostalgia and the politics of hybridity through culinary tourism and heritage foodways. A case study of Galicia, Spain.

This work interrogates the historical present through the lens of culinary tourism and heritage foodways, positing that the contemporary interest in authenticity and heritage are emblematic of a populism that has the potential to be emancipatory and liberating or reactionary. I read these trajectories through foodways and the recent rise in popularity of culinary tourism, theorizing the implications of the turn to nostalgia as a mode of consumerism as the articulation and recuperation of primordial identities that rely on the shoring up of boundaries and the investment in space as place. Qualitative and interpretive methodologies structure the study the tensions between tradition and modernity as performance ethnography and the autoethnographic voice weave through an examination of policy, affect, history, and culture. Presenting Galicia, Spain as a case study, this investigation recognizes the linkages between regional and national identities and global commodity culture. The European Union has been central to realizing the connections between agricultural policy and cultural policy, rendering autonomous regions, such as Galicia in northwest Spain, important sites of inquiry to understand these processes. The EU’s appellation system contributes particularly to the development and branding of Galicia’s wines and foodstuffs, encouraging local producers to modernize production processes and increase exports. Consortiums aimed at promoting their products’ prominence adopt marketing strategies stressing the historic ties to the terroir and culture of Galicia to strengthen their market position and promote their foodstuffs within Spain, the EU, and globally. However, many Galician traditions—including foodstuffs and wines—are omitted from the Spanish imaginary, which privileges gazpacho, paella, and Rioja wines as signifiers of the nation. This has precipitated localization of the wines within Galicia’s cultural and political heritage, while exporting “Galicia” to the global community as embodied through their wines and foodways