‘Putting Place on a Plate’ along the West Cork Food Trail

ABSTRACT

In 2011, Ireland's National Tourism Development Authority (F?ilte Ireland) announced a plan to increase the number of food tourists to the country. According to the plan, Irish food will be recognized for the quality of its regional food experiences that evoke a unique sense of place. To further the plan, it created a program entitled ‘Place on a Plate’ which encourages restaurant owners/chefs to offer fresh locally sourced seasonal food and list the names of local suppliers on their menus. This paper examines the effectiveness of this ‘Place on a Plate’ strategy by examining 53 restaurant menus along the West Cork Food Trail in southwest Ireland to determine whether they contain: (1) a statement as to the origin of their food supplies, (2) a listing of local food producers, and (3) geographical place name references on individual menu items. The study found that the majority of restaurants do not include a statement as to the origin of their food supplies, indeed only three out of the surveyed restaurants provided complete food supply listings. The largest number of menu items to be connected with a place were linked with Ireland followed by West Cork and the Atlantic. The results suggest that the ‘Place on a Plate’ strategy has had a limited impact and that more education needs to occur about its potential to contribute to West Cork's gastronomic identity.     

The lived experiences of school lunch: an empathy-based study with children in Sweden

ABSTRACT

School lunch is in general regulated through policies and agendas constituted by the perspectives of adults. In this article, we focus on children’s lived experiences of school lunch with a special emphasis on emotions and how they relate to social and physical dimensions. This study draws on empathy-based stories written by 10–11 year olds (n?=?171) from schools in Sweden. We identified three themes: Interaction and exposure, Routines and restrictions and Food and eating. The children’s lived experiences of school lunch and the emotions attached to them are closely associated and intertwined with the socio-spatial dimension of school lunch. A pleasant meal experience seems to require harmonization between the physical and social space whilst negative experiences contain tensions between them, something that actors working with school lunch and school lunch environments should take in consideration when resourcing, planning and scheduling school lunch, and also when designing new school restaurants.     

EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE: THE COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES OF FOOD‐RELATED ENTREPRENEURS IN RURAL DENMARK

As food production becomes increasingly integrated, globalized and competitive, small‐scale food‐related enterprises in many European countries are struggling to market and monetize their products. Although these struggles have been well documented, few studies have considered the ways in which food‐related entrepreneurs in rural contexts are adapting to and overcoming these challenges. In particular, little is known about how they differentiate and add value to their products. This article focuses on the development and implementation of new and hybrid commercial strategies by food‐related entrepreneurs in three rural communities in Denmark. These strategies add experiential elements to the longstanding practice of commodifying myths associated with rural settings and identities. Although harnessing culture and experiences to sell things is nothing new, we demonstrate that some Danish entrepreneurs are responding to market competition by tweaking and extending these concepts. In particular, it is argued that entrepreneurs use different experiences with varying levels of intensity and consumer engagement for different purposes. Whereas passive experiences such as storytelling are used to educate consumers about the specific qualities of products, more active and participatory experiences are sold as add‐ons and standalone products. The findings contribute to our understanding of food‐related entrepreneurship in rural contexts, consumption, value creation and the experience of economy more broadly.     

Names and Tales: On Folklore and Place Names

Abstract

Names, like stories, are linguistic performances; so the twin disciplines of folkloristics and place-name studies can learn from each other’s methods. Some names offer straightforward evidence for traditional culture, but others are rhetorical, not literal. Allusions to goblins, giants, and the Devil derive from playful storytelling rather than supernatural belief, while names of landmarks are used as pegs on which to hang local legends. The rules for coining names have varied through time and often use special linguistic markers to highlight moral or imaginative content. As we move into a more semiotically aware onomastics, we find ourselves interpreting names from a realm of popular idiom and allusion which is already familiar from folklore.     

Assessing diet and seasonality in the Lower Pecos canyonlands: an evaluation of coprolite specimens as records of individual dietary decisions

This article presents an evaluation of coprolite specimens from the Lower Pecos canyonlands as records of individual dietary decisions. Prior studies of coprolites from this region have greatly expanded our knowledge of Archaic subsistence patterns, but have not taken full advantage of the record of individual dietary decisions recorded in each coprolite specimen. The menu, or dietary combinations, reflected in individual coprolite specimens are assessed through the identification of several congruent botanical components derived from the same food resource, phytoliths, fiber ultimates, and epidermal sheets. The data is analyzed with hierarchical cluster analysis, an exploratory statistical technique. The resultant menus reflected in these clusters are evaluated with reference to a diet-breadth model developed for the known staple resources of the canyonlands.Three main menus are apparent in the specimens. The first menu consists of prickly pear (Opuntia sp.) cladodes, or nopales, and was principally, although not exclusively, consumed in the late spring. This menu is primarily consumed when other resources were not readily available and may be considered a dependable but undesirable meal. The second menu consists of pit-baked lechuguilla (Agave lechuguilla) and sotol (Dasylirion sp.) caudices, or hearts, common throughout the cool season. This menu entails high processing costs, but would provide a reliable caloric return. The third menu exhibits a monolithic reliance on prickly pear fruits, or tunas, during the summer. The ease of harvest and consumption is reflected in the seasonal dominance of this resource, which was assuredly a highly desirable meal. The dietary patterns recorded in the coprolite specimens from the Lower Pecos canyonlands demonstrate a seasonally variable diet-breadth that incorporated low-ranked resources during times of seasonal scarcity as well as a monolithic dependence on high-ranked resources when they were available in the local landscape.     

三维度服务体验实证研究

服务体验是顾客对服务遭遇所作出的感觉和评价。顾客每次消费都追求相应的利益,比如,追求产品或服务的实用功能、享乐性情感或增进与同伴的友谊等。不同的消费目的决定了顾客的服务体验应当是一个多维的概念。本文在文献回顾的基础上,提出服务体验包含功能体验、情感体验和社会体验3个维度,并以餐馆为调研行业,用问卷调研方法验证了这3个维度的合理性。最后,文章提出对旅游体验作进一步研究的几点思考。     

食在异乡：旅游世界的极端饮食体验研究

该文以日常生活世界和旅游世界二元对立的视角,针对旅游世界中地方性极端饮食文化体验现象及相关问题展开思辨性研究,研究发现：首先,相较日常生活世界的饮食活动,旅游世界的饮食消费行为体现出功能异化的体验性特征和极化倾向;其次,旅游世界饮食功能异化的内在动力是旅游世界和日常生活世界的二元对立;第三,旅游者的极端饮食体验活动中存在生理、心理、知识技能和社会维度上的四重障碍,并在层级上呈现出超越难度依次递减的规律;第四,基于地方性的饮食生产与基于流动性的饮食消费在旅游世界中实现了对立统一。该文最终将这些理论认识纳入旅游情境理论的理论框架中,构建旅游情境中地方性饮食体验的理论模型,为情境理论在旅游世界的应用拓展了新的方向。     

The reinvention of terroir in Danish food place promotion

ABSTRACT

This paper conceptualizes place branding narratives that mobilize local food and contemporary gastronomic trends by revisiting the notion of terroir (taste of place) as a strategic marketing asset. In particular, it explores how rural tourism destinations with little or no gastronomic heritage exploit the discourses of New Nordic Food to create a distinct sense of place. An extensive review of the literature identifies two conservationist strategies by which terroir narratives are constructed (accreditation and patrimonialization), neither of which fully captures the particular rhetorical approaches shaping the Nordic terroir. Drawing on empirical illustrations from Danish rural destinations, the paper argues that terroir can be reproduced and invented through manipulative rhetorical approaches and identifies two novel, transformational strategies framing terroir narratives (exoticizing and enterprising). The paper contributes with a conceptual model conceived through a unique combination of place-specific (typicality) themes and market-specific ideologies, which has the explanatory power to distinguish Nordic terroir narratives from earlier articulations of taste of place.     

价值共创:景区游客管理理念转向及创新路径

在可持续发展思潮的影响下,游客管理重新成为研究的热点。国内外景区游客管理理论先后出现了"以环境保护为导向"和"以游客为中心"两种重要思想,但二者均忽视了游客在自我管理中的能动性及其对景区可持续发展的重要意义,因而削弱了二者的实践价值。价值共创理论作为强调企业和消费者基于价值互动的新理论,为重新审视和创新景区游客管理理念提供了新路径。在价值共创式游客管理框架模型中,景区游客的偏好管理、容量管理、体验管理和行为管理等界面,构成了价值共创式游客管理理念模型的四大板块。景区为游客搭建对话与互动的平台,并构建个性化体验环境,推动四大板块的管理创新与联动,从而实现生态价值、体验价值和经济价值的最大化。     

论鲁迅第一人称的小说

在短篇小说中运用第一人称的叙事手法,同我国传统的说书人式的叙事方法截然不同,它是外国短篇小说创作的成功经验。在“五四”前后,鲁迅从表现新的现实生活出发,汲取了这一外来的创作经验,加以消融与改造,运用到自己的创作中,效果较好,也很有特色。可说这也是鲁迅对我国现代短篇小说创作方法的一个革新和突破。     

Platforms,Markets, and Contingent Calculation: The Flexible Arrangement of the Delivered Meal

UK online food delivery company Deliveroo has a platform that automates the coordination of meal delivery, creating a market for the delivered meal. This market indicates the necessity to examine the social arrangements produced through the platform beyond the labour of the delivery worker. Markets comprise heterogeneous actors that require their coordination to be calculated. Deliveroo, though, offers two competing views of markets. First, as interfaces in which supply and demand are represented as autonomous blocs that are articulated through the goods of the delivered meal whose constitution, including the labour of delivery, is black-boxed. Second, as agencement—formatting collective arrangements—in which the goods of the delivered meal are contingently calculated as a flexible arrangement of riders, restaurants and customers whereby these actors have differing degrees of choice concerning their participation, and through which new service performances are emerging in the necessity for their contingent interaction.     

It’s never too late to join the revolution! – Enabling new modes of production in the contemporary Danish food system

ABSTRACT

The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expressed in the food system. We conduct a comparative case study involving three product categories: craft beer, specialty flour and organic broilers. Craft beer and specialty flour have undergone a revolution, in which new flavours, products, practices and social relations are generated; by contrast, organic broilers have remained a relatively stable product category. The case studies demonstrate that the revolution is not just taking place in one domain, but it implies a multidimensional reconfiguration of the food system where an emphasis on multiple quality aspects and diversification of the product category is important. However, food trends are not the invention of the individual producer, but serve as common conventions that products can be related to, although their interpretation is not pre-given. In addition, a transition presupposes a shared vision and a coordination of activities among the actors in the food system or the mobilization of new actors who share this vision.     

Lurching through Public Law: The Unsteady State of the Subfield

Abstract

David Walsh is a student of Eric Voegelin's political thought, and this essay evaluates the influence of Voegelin's work on Walsh, while also suggesting how Walsh deviates from Voegelin's philosophy. The analysis is performed in terms of several key concepts from Voegelin's work, including Gnosticism, metaxy, luminosity, equivalences of experience, and history. It is argued that Walsh makes extensive use of Voegelin's ideas of metaxy, luminosity, and the equivalences of experience, but that he transforms these concepts as he moves beyond Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness and turns to a philosophy of existence that is not subject to the epistemological problems that continue to challenge Voegelin's thought. Finally, it is suggested that, in so doing, Walsh is actually continuing Voegelin's philosophical project, rather than undermining it.     

Storytelling as Method in Spatial Planning

Abstract

Drawing on the case of the Wageningse Eng in the Netherlands, this paper considers the role of “storytelling” within spatial planning practices. It moves away, though, from seeing it as merely a model of spatial planning, where “storytelling” is sometimes used to justify planners' ideals for the landscape, or a model for spatial planning, which pushes for a normative use of “storytelling” as a means of encapsulating local knowledge and the views of those who live in, and use, the landscape. Rather, the paper engages “storytelling” as a method for revealing how formal planning practices may be destabilized by more vernacular narratives seeking to subvert dominant discourses and processes. In doing so, it seeks to not only show the contested nature of participatory planning within the Netherlands, but also the ways in which narratives—as revealed via such a method—construct specific positionalities with real implications for notions of inclusivity within planning practices.     

Men and anti-violence initiatives: transnational feminist reflections from Afghanistan and Pakistan

Abstract

This article looks at how international development’s rhetoric for enlisting men to take up anti-violence against women’s work is translated into reality. Based on fieldwork conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I argue that whilst there have been success stories of men’s behaviour changing, the localisation of gender concepts and ideas into local frameworks has not been as successful. Furthermore, inattention to how gender relations are shaped by conflict and violence results in the dilution of feminist values around work on violence against women. This inattention also privileges middle-class men’s activism at the expense of activism by women and men from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds. The article concludes with a call for further transnational feminist dialogue and interventions in the area of men’s involvement, so that current and future initiatives are critical, reflexive and relevant.     

基于网络评论内容分析的餐饮消费者行为研究

网络评论是餐饮消费者潜意识中的消费偏好、感知等内在需求的外显投射,是其餐饮消费中最关注内容的外在显现。文章基于内容分析法,以大众点评网为例,对餐饮消费者的网络评论内容进行分析。结果表明:高价位餐厅消费者较低价位餐厅消费者的满意度评价更高,连锁餐厅消费者较单体餐厅消费者满意度更高;不同消费水平的消费者消费偏好有明显差异,低价位餐厅消费者更关注核心诉求,即食物本身的吸引力和价格高低,中价位餐厅消费者更关注服务,高价位餐厅的消费者更关注餐厅的综合品质,消费决策中更看重餐厅的环境、服务等非食物要素;从消费感知角度看,餐饮消费者最关注的前五位要素是:食物、环境、服务、价格和便利性。     

Stories of crossings and connections from Bawaka,North East Arnhem Land,Australia

This paper engages with Indigenous peoples' conceptualisations of borders, arguing that these unsettle dominant Eurocentric constructs of the border as terrestrial, linear, bound and defined through western legal frameworks. It does this by drawing on one aspect of the many storytelling experiences offered by members of the Indigenous-owned Yolngu tourism business Bawaka Cultural Experiences in northern Australia. We argue that stories told to visitors about multiple and diverse connections between Yolngu and Makassan people from Sulawesi, Indonesia, are intentional constructions which challenge dominant conceptions of Australia as an isolated island-nation. The stories redefine the border as a dynamic and active space and as a site of complex encounters. The border itself is continuously recreated through stories in ways that emphasise the continuity and richness of land and sea-scapes and are based on non-linear conceptions of time. The stories invite non-Indigenous people to engage with different kinds of realities that exist in the north and to re-imagine Australia's north as a place of crossings and connections.     

Touring as labour: mobilities and reconsideration of tour guiding in everyday life

Abstract

The research adopts the mobilities approach to examining the everyday experience of tour guides. Scholars tend to highlight guides as service providers and cultural brokers, whose activities and feelings seem to be subordinate to tourism consumption. In contrast, the research moves beyond the context of business and economy and seeks to resituate tour guiding in ordinary life. It draws on the ethnographic fieldwork in Sanya, a coastal city in south China, and adopts the methods of secondary data collection, interviews and participant observation for data generation. Specifically, the research scrutinises how tourism mobilities are embedded into the production of local guides’ daily practices, emotions and feelings. Tour guiding is characterised by movement/stillness, instability and contested meanings. On working days, guides travel with tourists between scenic sites, receiving unstable income. The mobile work greatly shapes their everyday rhythms, social networks, familial lives and identities. On jobless days, guides are likely to confine ordinary practices to residence and suffer from deep anxiety. Immobilities arouse their feelings of inability and worries about the future, thus lowering their expectations of career and personal development. The research problematises the idiosyncrasy of tour guiding and underscores its close relationship with the production of everyday practices and experience, thus giving a wider view on tourism work. In so doing, it also enriches our understanding of the complexity of tourism mobilities and contributes to the debate on the de-differentiation of tourism.     

Storytelling and co-authorship in feminist alliance work: reflections from a journey

If all writing is fundamentally tied to the production of meanings and texts, then feminist research that blurs the borders of academia and activism is necessarily about the labor and politics of mobilizing experience for particular ends. Co-authoring stories is a chief tool by which feminists working in alliances across borders mobilize experience to write against relations of power that produce social violence, and to imagine and enact their own visions and ethics of social change. Such work demands a serious engagement with the complexities of identity, representation, and political imagination as well as a rethinking of the assumptions and possibilities associated with engagement and expertise. This article draws upon 16 years of partnership with activists in India and with academic co-authors in the USA to reflect on how storytelling across social, geographical, and institutional borders can enhance critical engagement with questions of violence and struggles for social change, while also troubling dominant discourses and methodologies inside and outside of the academy. In offering five ‘truths’ about co-authoring stories through alliance work, it reflects on the labor process, assumptions, possibilities, and risks associated with co-authorship as a tool for mobilizing intellectual spaces in which stories from multiple locations in an alliance can speak with one another and evolve into more nuanced critical interventions.