FOOD: AMONG MEMORY, HERITAGE AND IDENTITY

Abstract

Food is an  important issue of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Its dimension of knowledge and know-how transmitted from generation to generation, based mainly on oral traditions and centred on cultural and social practices, gives a sense of power, identity and temporary continuity in the communities.  In 2000, the Portuguese Council of Ministers come out with a resolution whose aim is to study and preserve "the recipes of portuguese national traditional cuisine, particularly the cuisine based on autochthonous fauna and flora as well as local, regional and national products. Also those products manufactured in Portugal and considered of interest from cultural, historical , ethnographical, social or technical point of view, caring out values of memory, ancient, authenticity, singularity or symbolic, should be cherished" (RCM Nº 96/2000). Thus, the law establishes several rules in order to preserve and develop the promotion of a national cuisine as a representative aspect of the portuguese cultural heritage. The process of defining the bases of heritage are an elite construct and a political perspective of what shall be valued in a certain moment in time and in a certain political context. So, territories are political puzzles that show desired and transitional identities, at once cristalized and transformed in time. Heritage is supplied with a political dimension that is determinant in the gastronomic and alimentary identity, concerning the local, regional and global. Local governance institutions on the other hand, try to encourage the territories under its influence, by the acceptance and /or promoting marketing actions and labels generating local brands that often reinforce identity symbols or (re)invent it. The processes of touristification of historical places and city centres are hardly far from these attitudes and as a consequence of these acts the initial intention of preservation turns into degradation.