Bourdieu in his well-known Distinction has given portrayal overall that in the way we decide to operate our lives and in the items we choose to buy we signify how we wish to be seen and which society milieu we want to be regarded as occupying. Food and drink consumption belongs among this general activity. We are making a social and cultural statement through our choices among food and drink products and the options we select from their range of contextual environments of shops and retail outlets, restaurants, bars and cafes and tearooms etc.
In food and drink tourism, it can be envisaged that there is a likely cultural dovetailing to be considered. However, in the event of the answer to the question already posed – ‘whether an elision is occurring to deliver a new touristic culture that is embedded in the style and elements of everyday life?’ – being ‘no’, then to be asked is if – in tourism’s way and daily life manner becoming kept un-clearly divided – a problematic collision is being represented.
It appears that there is deeper complexity and cloudiness due to distinctions between the types and stages of the tourist and among types and stages of everyday life. What the tourist who is practised and who believes they are discerning is coming to consume much on holiday, in terms of food and drink, is the everyday, local, authentic food and drink of the place, or what they want to perceive as such. Meanwhile, some hosts’ food and drink consuming habits may consist of relying on mass-market products from supermarket and deep freeze rather than upon items emanating from local agriculture and traditional production ways on their doorstep. Mass tourist and less long-standing traveller counterparts to discerning tourists may be in a different stage and culture of conduct in which their desire is for a universal type of food and drink or that which is ‘the same’ culturally and in actuality as at home.
This is notwithstanding that such food may not really be quite so uniform as promulgated and believed, it being altered and rendered marginally special by local way of some kind. The chip is an example of this. Barthes depicts General de Gaulle as regarding the frîte as ‘the alimentary sign of Frenchness’; in the UK chips, in alliance with fish, would be also be regarded as a national dish. It can be seen that different potato varieties bring variation to the entity of the chip; different ranges of growing soil generate different tastes to the potato to be brought to the arena. This is albeit in the context that McDonald’s has a formula of operation to bring a chip to the consumer that is the same the world over. In, for example, nations and religions, by presences of varying cultural attitudes, a ‘same’ food can be viewed differently, and to the extent that one group will treat them as suitable to eat and another will see them as unsuited or prohibited to be consumed.
Cultural itineraries and themed routes
