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Gastronomic Heritage and Cultural Tourism. An exploration ofthe Notion of Risk in Traditional Mexican Food and the

Gastronomic System

Ricardo Mazatn Pramo

Abstract. During most part of the 20th century the theories of popular culture werehighly concerned with the issue of the traditional cultural hierarchies high, popular,folk- in a predominantly vertical mode. Its evolution, in the present, shows a majorconcern with the destiny of traditions and cultural heritages, particularly thosewhich are imminently popular (in the sense of folk); and to the destiny of traditionsand cultural heritages are hooked the destinies of entire ethnic groups, even nations,and ultimately of the whole of humanity, if we attend to the UNESCO definitions ofCultural Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage. The mass media and the

emergent cultural industries were the main threat in the early 20th century, now theemergenceof the mass-tourism seems to be a major issue, representing both dangerand opportunities for development. Cultural heritages both tangible andintangible- are being organized to attract tourism and to protect culture at the sametime, in a formula that has been called sustainable tourism. Drawing from SystemsTheory, this paper centres on the concept of risk as a theoretical tool to approachthis recent concern on Traditional Cultures, focusing at the end on the case ofTraditional Mexican Food, Gastronomy and their relation within the context ofCultural Tourism.

Keywords: Communication; Cultural Heritage; Food; Gastronomy; Luhmann; Risk;

Traditions; Time; Tourism.

Introduction

It is commonly accepted that mass culture came along with the democratization andindividualization of society, the hegemony of the urban over the rural and theconsumption practices that these developments entailed. The early theories of massand popular culture appear now as simple paranoia before changes in the means of

production and communication that threatened the certainties upon which the verticalconfiguration of the western societies were settled. The spread of industrializationand urbanization soon reached the terrain of the arts and cultural fruition. When anew panorama arises - a reality that has not yet been digested, rationalized andcontrolled - a discourse develops to stigmatize the effects and processes involved.Theories like the mass culture theory came as a strategy to maintain the hegemonyof the ruling classes in a time when photography, cinematography, television, radio,transportation and the whole means of communication, production and mobility wererevolutionized in just a few decades. In their tenor, authenticityis the core conceptthat underlies the validity of any cultural production and fruition. We read inMacDonald:

Folk Art grew from below. It was a spontaneous, autochthonous expressionof the people. [] Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by


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technicians hired by businessmen [] Folk Art was the peoples owninstitution, their private little garden walled off from the great formal park oftheir masters High Culture. (1957: 60)

In the early 21stcentury, it is precisely these so called Folk Cultures (now addressed

as Traditional Cultures) which are said to be at risk, particularly those that pertain toethnic and cultural minorities. The threat in the present is the changing orderconceptualized in Globalization, characterized by an unprecedented capacity ofmobility: mobility of capital, people, and information. One particular consequence ofthis mobility is the emergence of mass-tourism. The issue of mass-tourism has

provoked a great deal of theoretical and empirical work in the various fields of thesocial sciences and humanities: anthropology, history, geography, sociology,architecture and urbanism. Simultaneously, national governments and supranationalinstitutions have actively addressed mass-tourism as a twofold phenomenon: as asource of economical growth; and as a source of cultural risk. The emphasis so far is

being put on a mediating conception: that mass-tourism can promote mutual

understanding and respect between cultures, but that it has to be carefully developed,with threats being turned into opportunities. This has given rise to the widespreadconcept of sustainable tourism.

The present paper examines at a theoretical level how the conceptual elaboration ofrisk in systems theory is useful to address these problems. Particularly, it focuses onthe figure of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, recently created by UNESCO, inreference to Traditional Mexican Food. In 2004, the Mexican government postulatedTraditional Mexican Food for the List of the Masterpieces of the Oral and IntangibleHeritage. This had no precedent, and the ambitiousness of the project itself is animportant contribution to the debate on Intangible Cultural Heritages and TraditionalCultures (as well as Cultural tourism), regardless of the outcome of it. Nevertheless,one thing is consistently omitted: the specific reference to gastronomy in the contextof these issues. Here, I examine this problem from the perspective of Systems Theory,

by setting out four fundamental points: a) the outline of the concept of risk in SystemsTheory and its relevance in the relation of Traditional Mexican Food and theGastronomic System; b) the evolution of Gastronomy as a social system and itsdivergence with respect to Traditional Culinary Systems, divergence that is dependenton the evolution of modern society itself drifted away from traditional notions ofcommunity. Modern society does not surround one single centre but too many;hence, it is functionally differentiated; c) the evolution of this system as a system of

communication operationally closed.

I. Risk

In Systems Theory, risk is an occurrence inherent in a systems process of evolution.The system faces the necessity of reducing complexity to continue its reproduction.This way, it must make decisions marked in a temporal distinction (Past/Future),where Present (present of the system and therefore determined by the systemstemporality) establishes as the form of the distinction: the actual moment of decision

what Luhmann refers to as blind spot. Luhmanns concept of risk is part of thetheoretical elaboration on time within Systems Theory. In this theoretical context,


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The structural coupling, says Luhmann, is a) not fitted with the totality of theenvironment, only with a selected part; thus, b) only a cut made in the environment iscoupled structurally with the system and the rest is left outside. What has been leftoutside can affect the system only destructively. (Luhmann 1995, 130-1).

Two things can be inferred from the previous considerations. First, that the increaseof complexity of a system derives in an increase of dependence of the system on itsenvironment, which in turn increases the production of structural couplings and this isa circular process (major complexity = major dependence = more structural couplings= major complexity). Second, that the more this happens, the more the systemgenerates potential for destruction, being clear then that complex, closed, auto-reflective systems are also in a constant state of emergency.

II. Traditions, Heritage and Gastronomy

To understand how French gastronomy has been able to become so complex and

play its role of legitimisation says J P Poulain -, it is necessary to draw thesociological and imaginary context of its emergence and development. (2002: 205).Elias, in his major work The civilizing process (1994), embarked in the quest for thatwhich Erasmus of Rotterdam called civilit, concluded that manners, and primordiallythose concerning the table - and thus are engaged in the process of incorporation4.The development of these manners, he considers, are crucial in the development of anotion of Europeans: some sort of European social unity, later exported with success.With the appearance of MassialotsLe cuisinier royal et bourgeoisin 1691, it isinaugurated one of the primordial functions of gastronomic literature which, fromMenon to Gault et Millau and through Grimod de la Reynire and Brillat-Savarin,

proposes to initiate in good taste the middle classes in queue of social ascension(Poulain 2002: 209). It is precisely Brillat-Savarin, the figure who has best survivedto our present days, who spoke about the natural appetite,which is of the order ofneed, and, on the other, luxurious appetite,which is of the order of desire, arguingthat the pleasure of eating requires if not hunger, at least appetite; the pleasure of thetable is most often independent of both. (Barthes 1985: 62). In the same tenor,Mennell points that the gastronomic writing has an affinity with pornography:Certainly, both gastronomy and pornography dwell on the pleasures of the flesh, andin gastronomic literature as in pornography there is vicarious enjoyment to be had.(Mennell 1985: 271). Food has evolved from a culinary practice with symbolic andecological referents convergent in the cultural universe of a community (traditional

culinary system), to a system of communication capable of dealing with thedifferentiation that overcame the limits of (traditional) culinary systems. It was in theevolution of this vicarious enjoyment, this distinction expressed by Brillat-Savarinand this opening-up of food as source of social distinction to broader sectors ofsociety which gave birth to modern gastronomy. It is valid to invert Fernndez-Armestos proposition: that gastronomy brought differentiation as he proposed(2002) is as feasible as that differentiation brought gastronomy.

In the contemporary world, there is a contrast between the meaning of food for manyof the called indigenous groups5, and the meaning of food in the context and flow of

public/urban consumption, which is synthesized in the restaurant. In the latter, food

consumption establishes in a direction opposed to that of the community: socializationbased on inclusion vs. socialization based on exclusion. The practice of restaurant


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consumption attains meaning as a practice of social differentiation and leisure. Therestaurant sowed in the public sphere ways of social differentiation more sophisticatedand explicit than those which preceded it in the private sphere6.

From the late 18thcentury, when the bourgeoisie began to be hegemonic in Europe

this system changed from a closed system of socialization to an open one, where casteis gradually substituted by merit. Consumption in the public sphere, whichconsequentially gives a huge turn - public affairs become private and private become

public, as has been exposed by Habermas (1989) - and it gradually becomes theprimordial barometer to determine social position and to develop mechanisms ofsocial distinction. The restaurant emerges in the heart of all these changes. It is inthis sense a creation of great transcendence, closely linked to that other creation thathas dominated the western thought for over 200 years: freedom.

The concept of eating out is based on the idea of going outside the boundaries of theprivate home to eat surrounded by strangers7. Although this seems normal and

familiar nowadays, it constituted a radical reconfiguration of the social space that hascontinued for the last two hundred years8. Freedom constitutes something that is thereto be attained by every person as an immanent right, but only through struggle.Competition, in all levels of the social, is the keyword of modernity.

Referring to the ideas of Foucault on the birth of the author,

When a historical given function is represented in a figure that inverts it, onehas an ideological production. The author is therefore the ideological figure

by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation ofmeaning. (1998: 222)

The restaurant is again central in the birth of the author in the kitchen. In France thisbegan to occur in the late 18thcentury, and with the early 19thcentury came thebreakage of structures - and of the institutions supporting these structures, such as theguilds(Spang 2003) - that delimited the trades strictly to certain practices and onecould not transcend those limits9. The idea of freedom, among other things, finallyimposes and indeed constitutes hegemony. By the mid-19thcentury the restaurant

became an open, secular system that represented freedom in the consumption of foodand leisure. In the 18thcentury, says Luhmann,

With good taste comes the self-legitimacy of the individual. Under termssuch as taste, interest, pleasure, it is no longer possible to determine the otherfrom the outside, but only the other himself is capable to speak the last wordabout his interests, his taste, his pleasure. With the development of thissemantics, rationality is left out in a terrain specifically circumscribed: theformulation of criteria, decisions, knowledge. (Luhmann 1995: 196)

This terrain is precisely what Poulain refers to as gastronomys role oflegitimisation. The restaurant, as we know it today writes Rebecca Spang represents the translation of an eighteen-century cult of sensibility into nineteen-century sense of taste: the mutation of one eras social value into anothers culturalflourish (Sprang 2001: 3). One thing must be left clear enough, though: the restaurantdoes not equal gastronomy. The restaurant is simply a subsystem that has developed


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the capacity of auto-description, and it has played a crucial role in the modernevolution of gastronomy by means of taking matters of taste, culinary and socialdifferentiation to a stage where food consumption becomes a public issue.

Nevertheless, modern gastronomy is much broader than the restaurant (supermarkets,food industry and agribusiness, food organizations, etc.).

The transcendence of the gastronomic system lies in its structural capacity fororganizing the production, distribution and consumption of food, both in the publicand private spheres, through operations of communication. And this, under a constantcode: good to eat10as the twofold phenomenon of Incorporation: social and

physical. There is a determinant shift in social evolution when food, from beingassociated with ceremonial practices commonly linked with issues of fertility where avoiding hunger was primordial, turns to a sustained food security11and it is

possible to speak of better foods (Barthes 1985; Fernndez-Armesto 2005; Fischler2001; Vzquez Montalbn 1997) in a relatively generalized way. The latter is a

dynamic of differentiation that as soon as it germinates generates more diversity andmore complexity exponentially. Here, not eating has no effect, gastronomy andhunger are in principle dissociated; food is not distributed to alleviate hunger but toexpand commerce and reproduce the actual gastronomic system. Nonetheless, anddespite the levels of food security achieved and the enormous surpluses of food withingastronomy today, those who cannot opt for social differentiation are left aside12.Distribution indeed is primordially a phenomenon whose operations communication- are organized according to complex criteria of supply and demand, but equallylinked with dynamics of social differentiation - connected with the other two basic

parts of the system: production and consumption13. For gastronomy hunger does notmatter, either abundance; only the comparative differences between different foods,

different ways of eating and the diverse media of communicating these differences.Yet in this process gastronomy faces the necessity of creating distinctions uponprevious distinctions (form of the distinction, re-entry, paradoxes of the re-entry,dissolution of the paradox [Luhmann 1995: 354]) to actualize its meaning. In this

process of actualization there is always something left outside: recipes, foods, books,trades, entire cuisines, etc. This way, the system reduces complexity.

The problem here is what relates the Traditional Mexican Food with the GastronomicSystem. I will take a particular feature that can be illustrative for the case in question.What is referred to by culinary system in this paper is based on religious, ethnic,

class notions; rituals, ceremonies and specific meanings attributed to certain elementsthat reproduce constantly (maize, rice, wine, olive oil, etc.). All these elements do not

penetrate the gastronomic system14. There cannot establish a relation between ethnicgroup and food in gastronomy: gastronomy makes an ethnic attribution to certainfoods (independently of issues of legitimacy: legitimacy is legitimacy within thesystem, not within the communities in question). Gastronomy thus constructs notionsof ethnicity around certain food and, in principle, these do not attend the relationethnic group-food that occurs in the original systems (culinary). The so called ethnicfood in some parts of the system does not attend to a specific relation between a

particular ethnic group and its cuisine, it attends to a relation, strictly communicative,in certain parts of the gastronomic system. There are, naturally, parts of the system

which exert more influence than others. As the place where gastronomy wasdeveloped faster than anywhere else, for a long time France exerted the highest


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influence in the system. Nevertheless, once communication could reproduce based onits own heritage (in operative closure), the centres of power are less related withspecific notions of national or regional order15. Yet, precisely from this derives thegrowing capacity of many cuisines of participating in the operations of gastronomyand integrating into it. Gastronomy is seen as an alternative to access communication

and thus power for these cuisines. It is seen as an opportunity to actualize theseculinary systems. But these cannot be sustained within gastronomy because to

participate in the operations of gastronomy these must transmute. This way,gastronomy enriches and traditional cuisines become impoverished. Yet, gastronomyreproduces its environment and creates its own traditions in a re-entry of the form ofthe distinction system/environment. The cuisines aforementioned can be absorbed byand reproduced within gastronomy. In accordance with the temporality of the system,these cuisines are developed through new distinctions. Ultimately, what wasoriginally a traditional cuisine evolves within the system and further divides between,for instance, traditional and innovative. These traditions are no longer referred to thetraditions of the community, of the traditional culinary system; these are gastronomic

traditions. The question comes about the actual existence of the traditional culinarysystems in the terms explained above. These exist, on the one hand, as long as theyare assumed and maintained as pre-modern cultural products (alive in many of the socalled traditional communities)16, but incapable of developing as systems ofcommunication (in closure). They exist, on the other hand, as part of the heritage ofgastronomy, in the form of history and memory. The system must assume andovercome the paradox of having to cut in the form of a distinctionsystem/environment, and must actualize this distinction constantly to maintain itsunity. Following Luhmann: When a distinction is made, one part of the form isindicated; nonetheless, with it comes, simultaneously, the other part. There are asimultaneity and a difference of a temporal order. No part is something by itself. It isactualized only for the fact that it is indicated, instead of the other. (Luhmann 1995:83). Gastronomy, then, must decide which parts will be maintained as heritage in theform of tradition and history, and which parts must be cut in the actualization of thedistinction system/environment. Parts of the environment have the potential tointegrate the system, as well as parts of the system have the potential to be marked onthe other side of the distinction.

This is not the most favourable space to deepen a discussion on power, not even inrelation with gastronomy. One conceptual approach, though, is important to clarify.

Power is everywhere as intrinsic to communication. Without power communicationcannot proceed and therefore it loses its quality of operation. All distinctionsproduced in the interior of the system are possible through operations ofcommunication. It is not possible to divide the world by distinctions, reach theformation of paradoxes and then solve these paradoxes through further distinctions, ifthese operations dont form specific dynamics of power. A differentiated world is aworld in constant struggle to mark one side of differences. For Luhmann, power is asymbolic medium. Opposing a Foucauldian approach, we would say that all symbolicmedia are media of power (Borch 2005) It has to be argued that wherever there iscommunication there arise dynamics of power. Communication never occurs (evenless likely at a social level) in a completely horizontal manner, it is always uneven.

Communication objectualizes the parts involved: when Luhmann substituted thesubject by the operation he equally liberated communication from the selfless quest


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for consensus. Indeed, even when there is consensus it is not unbiased, it is inclinedtowards one of the parts: it is considered a consensus when there is no conflict

between A and B, but in reality this consensus is based in the fact that A could (tosome extent at least) impose over B or vice versa. Consensus in communication ismerely a stage to reach action, and it is always achieved through the exercise of

power. The forms of this power within communication are extensively varied fromhistory and memory to political persuasion and promises of affection17. The fact that

power makes communication possible has as a consequence that power is exercisedevery time communication occurs and, consequently, power is exercised according tothe specific operational needs and functionality of a system. This means that power iswidely distributed in countless operations and systems.

In the case of Mexican food, there is a clear bifurcation: Traditional Mexican Foodaiming for the protection of traditions around Mexican food (Research from the socialsciences; institutional projects -governmental and NGOs); and ContemporaryMexican Food whose emphasis is on Mexican High Cuisine or Mexican food as an

element of social legitimacy (Media industry; Gastronomic industry; Tourism).These two link through similar claims; namely: a) A struggle over authenticity; b) Arevaluation and updating of Traditional Mexican food (the former via the formation ofa Cultural Heritage, the latter via the formation of a high or fine Mexican cuisine,consumable in sophisticated urban settings); c) The strategic reconfiguration of theindigenous and the popular (especially rural); d) The exposition of Mexican food as a

privileged source of national pride and sovereignty.

Food falls into the formal category of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). UNESCOonly formalized this figure of the ICH in the year 2003. Cultural Heritages exist, areformed because they constitute some pertinent knowledge by the specific period whenthey are formed. Cultural heritages are not to be protected but are themselvesinstitutional means to protect something else. The change of mentality with respect to

problems of auto-determination and auto-description, of definition of a historicaltemporality (history, memory, knowledge), is what recently has put the emphasis onTraditional Cultures. These cultures are primarily the cultures of others spatiallyor temporally, ethnic and cultural minorities. Under the logic of multiculturalismthese become of all human beings, and indispensable to configure a true worldcommunity or human community. There occurs a sophisticated operation wheredifferences must be assimilated: the whole appropriates the parts. This acquires

coherence through consumption in the normalization of Intangible Heritages, on theone hand; and Cultural Tourism, on the other. Indeed, in the present context, theimportance of food as cultural heritageis bonded (if not exclusively) to theimportance of food as object of contemporary consumption. Contemporaryconsumers have become slippery travellers who move temporally and spatially,consuming distant poles of their own cultures (in the sense of national, regional) andthe cultures of others in a transversal strategy of social distinction (Bourdieu 1984;Desforges 1998; Doorne et al., 2003). Knowledge and experience of the widest

possible variety of alternatives are equated with cultural sophistication, say Wardeand Martens (2000: 120). It is no longer high culture fruition that is there tolegitimise dominant social positions, but variety: the others cultures have become

essential determinants of social distinction18

. This tendency this capacity- toconsume the other is one of the main factors that ultimately make possible what has


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been called cultural tourism. The postulation of Traditional Mexican Food intendsto rescue and preserve a series of cultural practices that define the way of living ofmillions of people throughout Mexico. The creation of the ICH by UNESCO comesto existence during the decade of the indigenous peoples (1995-2004). It seeks forcultural diversity and social inclusion in the realm of the present temporality, based on

the acceleration of movement and change19

. After various documents presented atUNESCO, the Mexican postulation finally focused on the ceremonies and cultural

practices around corn (maize). Maize as the central element of the cosmogony andlife meaning of many indigenous and rural peoples in Mexico. Cooking and eatingare therefore in the centre of this cosmogony. Food can be transferred tangibly, butmeaning cannot. The meaning underlying the cooking and eating cultures of these

peoples is what constitutes the argument to propose Traditional Mexican Food as anICH20. It is these meanings that must be proposed at UNESCO precisely because theycannot be absorbed by the gastronomic system, due to its operative closure.

III. Tourism and Mexican Food

Tourism is the privileged area where Traditional Mexican Food and Gastronomycouple. Increases in spatial mobility both for leisure and for business have madetourism an important source of income especially for non-wealthy countries. InMexico, tourism is the third highest source of income, after oil and remittances frommigrants, Mexico being the seventh most popular tourist destination in the world(WTO 2001). Furthermore, according to the WTO, tourism will be the first economicactivity of the world by the year 2020. Tourism is therefore an increasinglycompetitive market, and a particularly complex one, from the perspective that what is

there to be competitive can go as far as the everyday lives of ordinary people - peoplewho at the same time are excluded from the whole tourist process. Precisely thiseffort to include these people into the realm of tourism, as active members, is whathas been labeled sustainable tourism (a derivative of cultural tourism).

The recent discourse of Mexican food places food as one of the major cultural goodsto be offered in tourism. In 2002, a web page of the Ministry of Tourism reviewedsome of the major attractions of the region (www.mexico-travel.com):

[] whether one comes to explore the archaeological treasures, wanderthrough the colonial cities, or simply relax on the beautiful beaches, restassured, one will take home memories and some of the magic of Mexicoas well. (in Coronado/Hodge 2004: 89)

Archaeological sites represent the greatness of the Pre-Hispanic cultures; the colonialcities represent the greatness of the New Spain, extension of the Spanish empire,universe of Spaniards and Creole; the beach resorts represent the success of a marketeconomy where modernity is apparent and consumable along with the naturalresources that, in the case of Mexico, are primordially offered in the great length of its

coasts. To these three categories, food has recently been added as a fourth as an area


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of opportunity for tourism development; the same web page referred to aboveadvertises:

There are several hidden treasures just waiting to be explored. Ancient

Aztec pyramids, authentic foods and fantastic shopping. Whether you'relooking to visit past civilizations or simply lie on the beach and work onyour golf game... Mexico can accommodate. (www.mexico-travel.com,visited on July 4, 2005)

The three original categories can all be related back to food. Food has the possibilityto represent the greatness of the Pre-Hispanic and the colonial pasts, and also theideals of modernity in a consumption culture as developed in liberal economies.Another aspect comes to light, however: the entrance of the indigenous peoples andthe popular sectors, both urban and rural, as important elements in this companionshipof culture and tourism. Food, therefore, or the discourse upon which Mexican Food

has been forming in the last two decades, represents a synthesis of what is worthshowing as heterogeneous yet harmonious. Mexican food, in relation to tourism, isgrounded on a principle of complacency: mexicanityas unity, consensus andharmony. Ultimately, food constitutes the main present exchange coin of Mexicans asa whole whole meaning unity- in the international scene, where tourism is

primordial.

Recently, Rodolfo Elizondo, the Mexican Minister of Tourism, declared that thepostulation of the Traditional Mexican Food at UNESCO is important becausegastronomy is a key factor when deciding a tourist destination. The efforts towardsthe development of culture and tourism of the Ministry of Tourism and the NationalCouncil for the Culture and the Arts are not always compatible, and at some point

become conflictive21. Nonetheless, they coexist as parts of the same discourse aroundfood and tourism. Both agencies together, along with other private and publicinstitutions, have been promoting the postulation through the second half of the year2005. The emphasis is put on Mexican gastronomy, while the references to thetraditional cultures, the meanings of food in its traditional context (as it was

postulated) and the people that sustain these traditional cultures are omitted. Thecontent of the postulation has already been displaced in the present public debate22.This is not without severity; the imposition of gastronomy in this tenor constitutes aconflict when intending to represent Traditional Mexican food (traditional

knowledge). The tangible representation of the alleged Intangible Cultural Heritagehas replaced the intangible cultural practices that support it: the signifier imposed overthe signified (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Laclau 2005; see also Buenfil 1998 andDallmayr 1989) and communication has shifted. In the context of this postulation,gastronomy has reproduced its operations and marginalized Traditional MexicanFood.

IV. Conclusions

As has been exposed, the emergence and evolution of gastronomy as a social system

creates a growing divergence from traditional culinary systems, due to its increasingcomplexity based on an exponential reproduction of distinctions. On the other hand,


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Traditional Mexican Food is being organized as a Cultural Heritage to be protectedfrom gastronomy. Yet, it is only in this form of organization that it can face risk, andnot simply be vulnerable23. In other words, the organization of Traditional MexicanFood as a Cultural Heritage aims to secure its continuity, but simultaneously createsrisk in it. Why? Firstly, precisely because it couples structurally with gastronomy to

achieve this. Secondly, because this organization also carries a structural change,which points towards auto-description and development through communication (andthus distinctions). As soon as traditional Mexican food enters a process ofreproduction through communication, it must enter dynamics of power of the sameorder - communicative.

The postulation has already been rejected by UNESCO (November 2005), but it hascreated an important amount of information to be used, both by gastronomy andtraditional Mexican food, as information heritage. The peak of mass tourism appearsas an area of opportunity for both gastronomy and traditional foods. Mass tourism isstill a recent phenomenon that poses too many questions. The increased complexity

of the social systems today, of knowledge, creates an ever-greater space ofuncertainty. The issue of whether tourism is a source of opportunity or a source ofdanger in the case of food can only be sought in the production of risk within thegastronomic system and its structural coupling with traditional food.

Notes

1Meaning refers to the side of the distinction marked in the process of decision-making: past orfuture.2Note: Virilio does not use the term risk; he rather uses the term danger. Also note that Viriliofocuses on the problem of speed: the specific evolution of temporality through acceleration, where time

does not change but events multiply (and communication is an event); thus, the analysis of time isemphasized through the notion of space. Space, according to Virilio, tends to be erased by everincreasing speed. On the contrary, Luhmann didnt pay much attention to the issue of space whendealing with problems of time. An extensive theorization upon this matter can be found in Viriliosdromology/dromoscopy (1986; 1993; 1996; 2000; 2003; 2005; see also Armitage 2000).3For an analysis of risk from the perspective of time see Adam (1990); Adam/Beck/van Loon (2000).4The phenomenon of Incorporation is twofold: food enters the persons body and the person enters theworld (social) by eating.5It is important to stress this because the recent emphasis on the preservation of traditions, (intangible)cultural heritages, as well as other forms to classify ways of life and cultural expressions, to which areattributed labels such as genuine or threatened, are precisely those whose origins and continuity areto be found in these groups.6Before the 19thcentury the upper classes did not go out to eat, great banquets and sophisticated food

consumption occurred in the private sphere, still following a feudal logic, where the universe wasclosed, hermetic and the membership to the social groups was determined by birth and genealogy.7This phenomenon is particularly acute as an open and generalized practise in the restaurantconsumption, but this only makes sense in a particular social and historical context.8Como sugieren Low y Smith (2005), el espacio pblico est en plena transformacin por su crecienteprivatizacin y por su funcin cada vez ms importante como centro de comercio y consumo, ya no departicipacin democrtica, colectiva, o como centros de socializacin abierta.9Rebecca Spang explains how the story of Boulanger is more a romantic myth than a historical factwell founded. The story goes that Boulanger sold a restorative broth, a soup that he claimed hadcurative properties (thus the name restaurant). Later he decided to expand his offer and he startedselling a proper dish (lamb legs in white sauce), and with this he raised the opposition of thoseofficial guilds that claimed the exclusive right to sell prepared food. They took Boulanger to trial andBoulanger won the case. Thus, he was allowed to sell his dish and set precedents for the developmentof the restaurant industry. Spang, on the other hand, shows that the structure of the guilds related withfood was particularly complex, and its legal organization could have not been divided into a few clear


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attributions. It was necessary a political and social change to create the freedom of trade and itsinstitutional normalization. However, within this complexity referred by Spang in relation with foodlies the competency of modern gastronomy. On the other hand, the case of Boulanger - one of many -functions well to illustrate the self-descriptive processes that occur within the gastronomic systems.10Good to eat is not the same as good taste. Let us recall Bourdieus emphasis: The art of drinkingand eating rests undoubtedly as one of the few areas where the popular classes oppose explicitly to the

legitimate art of living. (Bourdieu 1999: 200)11Most debates around food in the present are not about food security, which is primordially a matterof distribution and production, but about food safety, which is a matter of consumption. Evidently,these three pillars of modern gastronomy cannot function independently, but the emphasis and theapproaches vary from one to another. In these sense, food safety is related with distribution andproduction because the production and distribution technologies are what make food safe or unsafe toeat, but it is primordially a matter of consumption because the emphasis is clearly on theeating/consumption pillar; whereas in the case of food security, what matters primordially is thatthere is enough food and the means to take it everywhere.12Peter Scholliers and Marc Jacobs are proud to say that in Europe in the twenty-first century, thereare restaurant accommodations for every purse and budget (Jacobs/Scholliers 2003: 8) In most partsof the world the food offer is huge and fits every purse and budget. Of course, this does not includethose with no purses and budgets.13

In the contemporary state of things, however, we can see how distribution has overcome productionand consumption by simply looking at the power reached by supermarkets worldwide. This powerestablishes with enormous influence (sometimes control indeed) upon both production andconsumption. Another archetypical case is thefast foodrevolution, where distribution and productiondetermine consumption all developed through communication. The later emergence of the Slow Foodmovement, primordially centred on consumption, opposing thefast foodis only possible in thecommunication operations within the system and it should not be seen as a rupture of the systemsunity.14By these elements I do not mean maize, rice, wine, olive oil, etc., but the symbolic practices andmeanings attached to them.15These notions become merely symbolic within the system.16Note that modern and pre-modern do not established in a hierarchical relation. These are simplynominal terms.17Note that this conception of power is closer to Foucault than to Luhmann.18Julia Kristeva (1982), referred to the construction of the Other - in the imagination of a particularcommunity - as something fearsome and fascinating at the same time as the abject. This abject hasan enormous influence on the identity of the given particular community by making it develop themargins that separate it and the abject, and by constituting the abject as the other side of adistinction: negative identification. Therefore, the community and its abject ultimately develop asense of belonging towards each other. In the case of Mexico the otherthat has been the abjecthistorically is to be found in the popular and the indigenous. The four claims set out above, where bothbranches of the discourse on Mexican food link, are strongly a matter of the struggle over this other,this abject (traditions, authenticity, heritage, sovereignty). Following Laclaus idea: [] how whichsignifier is fixed above a given signified is very much a political issue. (Andersen 2000, 53) It may beseen as well as the institutional rationalization of the sense of belonging referred above.19The political implications that may lie behind UNESCO are not a particular concern of the present

text.20Any postulation to be included in the List of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritagemust have a tangible expression. In this case is food, yet it is not exactly food that is being argued tobe at risk and the object of safeguarding. In social systems theory, the intangible part of this food is themedium(Loose Couple), the tangible is itsform (Strict Couple).21The latter is the agency that developed the postulation of the Traditional Mexican Food, through theCoordination of Cultural Heritage and Tourism.22This is not an analysis of the postulation and its pertinence; therefore I do not consider here the plansof action proposed to safeguard the Traditional Mexican food, which are indeed the other side of thepostulation.23Based on the theoretical framework exposed earlier.

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