Feeding the rural tourism strategy? Food and notions of place and identity

The humble rural cuisine has now been thrust at the forefront of economic development strategies. This conceptual paper is a contribution to a growing critical awareness of the operations of the food industry and helps to foster a critical understanding of how, if at all, local food and its associated culture can help sustain rural tourism particularly and rural communities generally. It is inspired by literature about the international political economy of food and the many experiences of local food development, and is aware of the contrast between the structure of the industry and the hopes associated with its practice on the ground. The paper thus argues that, beyond the glamour and hype, there are those who gain, as well as those who lose, from the current food fad. While it explains the causes of the contemporary craze with food, the paper also interrogates the naı¨ve expectations often placed in food as a motor of rural development, and as the panacea for struggling rural communities. The empirical data on which this chapter is based are drawn from 18 short chapters explaining the history of various “traditional dishes” from the islands of the broad North Atlantic that feature in a recent food publication.peer-reviewe