Gastronomic Heritage and Cultural Tourism.

An exploration of
the 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 were
highly concerned with the issue of the traditional cultural hierarchies high, popular,
folk- in a predominantly vertical mode. Its evolution, in the present, shows a major
concern with the destiny of traditions and cultural heritages, particularly those
which are imminently popular (in the sense of folk); and to the destiny of traditions
and 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 of
Cultural Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage. The mass media and the
emergent cultural industries were the main threat in the early 20th century, now the
emergence of the mass-tourism seems to be a major issue, representing both danger
and opportunities for development. Cultural heritages both tangible and
intangible- are being organized to attract tourism and to protect culture at the same
time, in a formula that has been called sustainable tourism. Drawing from Systems
Theory, this paper centres on the concept of risk as a theoretical tool to approach
this recent concern on Traditional Cultures, focusing at the end on the case of
Traditional Mexican Food, Gastronomy and their relation within the context of
Cultural 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 and
individualization of society, the hegemony of the urban over the rural and the
consumption practices that these developments entailed. The early theories of mass
and popular culture appear now as simple paranoia before changes in the means of
production and communication that threatened the certainties upon which the vertical
configuration of the western societies were settled. The spread of industrialization
and urbanization soon reached the terrain of the arts and cultural fruition. When a
new panorama arises - a reality that has not yet been digested, rationalized and
controlled - a discourse develops to stigmatize the effects and processes involved.
Theories like the mass culture theory came as a strategy to maintain the hegemony
of the ruling classes in a time when photography, cinematography, television, radio,
transportation and the whole means of communication, production and mobility were
revolutionized in just a few decades. In their tenor, authenticity is the core concept
that underlies the validity of any cultural production and fruition. We read in
MacDonald:
Folk Art grew from below. It was a spontaneous, autochthonous expression
of the people. [] Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by

technicians hired by businessmen [] Folk Art was the peoples own

institution, their private little garden walled off from the great formal park of
their masters High Culture. (1957: 60)
In the early 21st century, it is precisely these so called Folk Cultures (now addressed
as Traditional Cultures) which are said to be at risk, particularly those that pertain to
ethnic and cultural minorities. The threat in the present is the changing order
conceptualized in Globalization, characterized by an unprecedented capacity of
mobility: mobility of capital, people, and information. One particular consequence of
this 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 the
social sciences and humanities: anthropology, history, geography, sociology,
architecture and urbanism. Simultaneously, national governments and supranational
institutions have actively addressed mass-tourism as a twofold phenomenon: as a
source 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 widespread
concept of sustainable tourism.
The present paper examines at a theoretical level how the conceptual elaboration of
risk in systems theory is useful to address these problems. Particularly, it focuses on
the figure of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, recently created by UNESCO, in
reference to Traditional Mexican Food. In 2004, the Mexican government postulated
Traditional Mexican Food for the List of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage. This had no precedent, and the ambitiousness of the project itself is an
important contribution to the debate on Intangible Cultural Heritages and Traditional
Cultures (as well as Cultural tourism), regardless of the outcome of it. Nevertheless,
one thing is consistently omitted: the specific reference to gastronomy in the context
of 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 Systems
Theory and its relevance in the relation of Traditional Mexican Food and the
Gastronomic System; b) the evolution of Gastronomy as a social system and its
divergence with respect to Traditional Culinary Systems, divergence that is dependent
on the evolution of modern society itself drifted away from traditional notions of
community. 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 systems
temporality) 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 the
theoretical elaboration on time within Systems Theory. In this theoretical context,

risk is not an operation, nor a theory or a system, but simply a derivative of the
temporal distinction that a social system constantly conducts to secure its reproductive
process. Accordingly, the concept of risk closely relates to the concepts of time and
meaning1. Decisions construct the future, but the future is indeterminate because it
moves away constantly (Luhmann 1993, 1995). This notion of the future is based,
like most of Luhmanns theory of time, on Husserls phenomenology. Although the
specific reference to social systems operations does not resound in other concepts of
risk, the concept of risk is always somehow linked to the issue of time. Paul Virilio2
is concerned with the prospect of reaching a point where well no longer be able to
make the Past/Future distinction. Sensibly, it is not a comfortable state to be
permanently stuck in the present, in our blind spot, when we are constantly obliged to
make more decisions: to approach, blindly, the (unattainable) future. Nevertheless,
we seem to place ourselves in the situation of having to make more and more
decisions precisely because of the anxiety of being stuck in the present.
Consequently, the acceleration of our world increases.
Following Luhmann:
[] if a risk is to be attributed to a decision, certain conditions must be
satisfied, among which is the requirement that the alternatives being clearly
distinguishable in respect to the possibility of loss occurring. (2005: 23)
Similar notions of risk can be found in several other authors, from different theoretical
approaches (Beck 1992, 1995, 1996; Castel 1991; Douglas 1982, 1986; Giddens
1990, 1991, 19943). Following this, a decision can only be regarded as risk if there
is enough information supporting it: in some cases simply making a decision without
the proper information can be regarded as risk, but then only if there is the awareness
that the decision is being made in such conditions and not making the decision is an
option. From this derives the enormous importance of, and emphasis on, gathering
information. The so-called information age or network society (Castells 1996,
1997, 1998) is inevitably producing risk by generating information. James March and
Herbert Simon speak of the absorption of insecurity, which means that
organizations, once they have processed a piece of information and taken some
decisions upon such information, tend to refer back to these decisions as primary
sources of information, instead of looking back to the information upon which
decisions were made. This is clearly a case where risk is placed in the core of the
decision-making process in a distinction between past and future. Information is
essential to perform communication. Yet, the multiplication of information must be
reduced to make the systems reproduction possible. To reduce complexity is
necessary for the increase of complexity (Luhmann 1995, 132). In a similar
understanding, Baudrillard (1989) comments that the process of decision making
demands an enormous level of simplification. To make one decision is to exclude renounce it - to the rest of the world in that moment. Decision-making is itself a
complex operation, but in its occurrence it performs a reduction of complexity. This
is the structural coupling of a system, a particular state of the system by which it can
establish a selective relation with its environment. What is pertinent for a system is
that which can help it maintain its organization and structure current. In systems
theory this pertinence are the expectations of the system, and possibility of deviation
from the latter in the moment of decision-making constitutes risk.

The structural coupling, says Luhmann, is a) not fitted with the totality of the
environment, only with a selected part; thus, b) only a cut made in the environment is
coupled structurally with the system and the rest is left outside. What has been left
outside can affect the system only destructively. (Luhmann 1995, 130-1).
Two things can be inferred from the previous considerations. First, that the increase
of complexity of a system derives in an increase of dependence of the system on its
environment, which in turn increases the production of structural couplings and this is
a circular process (major complexity = major dependence = more structural couplings
= major complexity). Second, that the more this happens, the more the system
generates potential for destruction, being clear then that complex, closed, autoreflective 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 the
sociological and imaginary context of its emergence and development. (2002: 205).
Elias, in his major work The civilizing process (1994), embarked in the quest for that
which Erasmus of Rotterdam called civilit, concluded that manners, and primordially
those 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 a
notion of Europeans: some sort of European social unity, later exported with success.
With the appearance of Massialots Le cuisinier royal et bourgeois in 1691, it is
inaugurated one of the primordial functions of gastronomic literature which, from
Menon 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 survived
to our present days, who spoke about the natural appetite, which is of the order of
need, and, on the other, luxurious appetite, which is of the order of desire, arguing
that the pleasure of eating requires if not hunger, at least appetite; the pleasure of the
table 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, and
in gastronomic literature as in pornography there is vicarious enjoyment to be had.
(Mennell 1985: 271). Food has evolved from a culinary practice with symbolic and
ecological referents convergent in the cultural universe of a community (traditional
culinary system), to a system of communication capable of dealing with the
differentiation that overcame the limits of (traditional) culinary systems. It was in the
evolution of this vicarious enjoyment, this distinction expressed by Brillat-Savarin
and this opening-up of food as source of social distinction to broader sectors of
society which gave birth to modern gastronomy. It is valid to invert FernndezArmestos 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 many
of 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: socialization
based on inclusion vs. socialization based on exclusion. The practice of restaurant

consumption attains meaning as a practice of social differentiation and leisure. The

restaurant sowed in the public sphere ways of social differentiation more sophisticated
and explicit than those which preceded it in the private sphere6.
From the late 18th century, when the bourgeoisie began to be hegemonic in Europe
this system changed from a closed system of socialization to an open one, where caste
is gradually substituted by merit. Consumption in the public sphere, which
consequentially gives a huge turn - public affairs become private and private become
public, as has been exposed by Habermas (1989) - and it gradually becomes the
primordial barometer to determine social position and to develop mechanisms of
social distinction. The restaurant emerges in the heart of all these changes. It is in
this sense a creation of great transcendence, closely linked to that other creation that
has 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 the
private home to eat surrounded by strangers7. Although this seems normal and
familiar nowadays, it constituted a radical reconfiguration of the social space that has
continued for the last two hundred years8. Freedom constitutes something that is there
to 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, one
has an ideological production. The author is therefore the ideological figure
by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of
meaning. (1998: 222)
The restaurant is again central in the birth of the author in the kitchen. In France this
began to occur in the late 18th century, and with the early 19th century came the
breakage of structures - and of the institutions supporting these structures, such as the
guilds (Spang 2003) - that delimited the trades strictly to certain practices and one
could not transcend those limits9. The idea of freedom, among other things, finally
imposes and indeed constitutes hegemony. By the mid-19th century the restaurant
became an open, secular system that represented freedom in the consumption of food
and leisure. In the 18th century, says Luhmann,
With good taste comes the self-legitimacy of the individual. Under terms
such as taste, interest, pleasure, it is no longer possible to determine the other
from the outside, but only the other himself is capable to speak the last word
about his interests, his taste, his pleasure. With the development of this
semantics, rationality is left out in a terrain specifically circumscribed: the
formulation of criteria, decisions, knowledge. (Luhmann 1995: 196)
This terrain is precisely what Poulain refers to as gastronomys role of
legitimisation. The restaurant, as we know it today writes Rebecca Spang
represents the translation of an eighteen-century cult of sensibility into nineteencentury sense of taste: the mutation of one eras social value into anothers cultural
flourish (Sprang 2001: 3). One thing must be left clear enough, though: the restaurant
does not equal gastronomy. The restaurant is simply a subsystem that has developed

the capacity of auto-description, and it has played a crucial role in the modern
evolution of gastronomy by means of taking matters of taste, culinary and social
differentiation 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 for
organizing the production, distribution and consumption of food, both in the public
and private spheres, through operations of communication. And this, under a constant
code: good to eat10 as the twofold phenomenon of Incorporation: social and
physical. There is a determinant shift in social evolution when food, from being
associated with ceremonial practices commonly linked with issues of fertility
where avoiding hunger was primordial, turns to a sustained food security11 and it is
possible to speak of better foods (Barthes 1985; Fernndez-Armesto 2005; Fischler
2001; Vzquez Montalbn 1997) in a relatively generalized way. The latter is a
dynamic of differentiation that as soon as it germinates generates more diversity and
more complexity exponentially. Here, not eating has no effect, gastronomy and
hunger are in principle dissociated; food is not distributed to alleviate hunger but to
expand commerce and reproduce the actual gastronomic system. Nonetheless, and
despite the levels of food security achieved and the enormous surpluses of food within
gastronomy 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 equally
linked with dynamics of social differentiation - connected with the other two basic
parts of the system: production and consumption13. For gastronomy hunger does not
matter, 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 upon
previous 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 Gastronomic
System. 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 elements
that reproduce constantly (maize, rice, wine, olive oil, etc.). All these elements do not
penetrate the gastronomic system14. There cannot establish a relation between ethnic
group and food in gastronomy: gastronomy makes an ethnic attribution to certain
foods (independently of issues of legitimacy: legitimacy is legitimacy within the
system, not within the communities in question). Gastronomy thus constructs notions
of ethnicity around certain food and, in principle, these do not attend the relation
ethnic group-food that occurs in the original systems (culinary). The so called ethnic
food 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 was
developed faster than anywhere else, for a long time France exerted the highest

influence in the system. Nevertheless, once communication could reproduce based on

its own heritage (in operative closure), the centres of power are less related with
specific notions of national or regional order15. Yet, precisely from this derives the
growing capacity of many cuisines of participating in the operations of gastronomy
and 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 these
culinary 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, gastronomy
reproduces its environment and creates its own traditions in a re-entry of the form of
the distinction system/environment. The cuisines aforementioned can be absorbed by
and reproduced within gastronomy. In accordance with the temporality of the system,
these cuisines are developed through new distinctions. Ultimately, what was
originally a traditional cuisine evolves within the system and further divides between,
for instance, traditional and innovative. These traditions are no longer referred to the
traditions of the community, of the traditional culinary system; these are gastronomic
traditions. The question comes about the actual existence of the traditional culinary
systems in the terms explained above. These exist, on the one hand, as long as they
are assumed and maintained as pre-modern cultural products (alive in many of the so
called traditional communities)16, but incapable of developing as systems of
communication (in closure). They exist, on the other hand, as part of the heritage of
gastronomy, in the form of history and memory. The system must assume and
overcome the paradox of having to cut in the form of a distinction
system/environment, and must actualize this distinction constantly to maintain its
unity. Following Luhmann: When a distinction is made, one part of the form is
indicated; nonetheless, with it comes, simultaneously, the other part. There are a
simultaneity and a difference of a temporal order. No part is something by itself. It is
actualized 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 the
form of tradition and history, and which parts must be cut in the actualization of the
distinction system/environment. Parts of the environment have the potential to
integrate the system, as well as parts of the system have the potential to be marked on
the other side of the distinction.
This is not the most favourable space to deepen a discussion on power, not even in
relation with gastronomy. One conceptual approach, though, is important to clarify.
Power is everywhere as intrinsic to communication. Without power communication
cannot proceed and therefore it loses its quality of operation. All distinctions
produced in the interior of the system are possible through operations of
communication. It is not possible to divide the world by distinctions, reach the
formation of paradoxes and then solve these paradoxes through further distinctions, if
these operations dont form specific dynamics of power. A differentiated world is a
world in constant struggle to mark one side of differences. For Luhmann, power is a
symbolic medium. Opposing a Foucauldian approach, we would say that all symbolic
media are media of power (Borch 2005) It has to be argued that wherever there is
communication there arise dynamics of power. Communication never occurs (even
less likely at a social level) in a completely horizontal manner, it is always uneven.
Communication objectualizes the parts involved: when Luhmann substituted the
subject by the operation he equally liberated communication from the selfless quest

for consensus. Indeed, even when there is consensus it is not unbiased, it is inclined
towards 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 (to
some extent at least) impose over B or vice versa. Consensus in communication is
merely 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 from
history and memory to political persuasion and promises of affection17. The fact that
power makes communication possible has as a consequence that power is exercised
every time communication occurs and, consequently, power is exercised according to
the specific operational needs and functionality of a system. This means that power is
widely distributed in countless operations and systems.
In the case of Mexican food, there is a clear bifurcation: Traditional Mexican Food
aiming for the protection of traditions around Mexican food (Research from the social
sciences; institutional projects -governmental and NGOs); and Contemporary
Mexican 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) A
revaluation and updating of Traditional Mexican food (the former via the formation of
a Cultural Heritage, the latter via the formation of a high or fine Mexican cuisine,
consumable in sophisticated urban settings); c) The strategic reconfiguration of the
indigenous 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). UNESCO
only formalized this figure of the ICH in the year 2003. Cultural Heritages exist, are
formed because they constitute some pertinent knowledge by the specific period when
they are formed. Cultural heritages are not to be protected but are themselves
institutional means to protect something else. The change of mentality with respect to
problems of auto-determination and auto-description, of definition of a historical
temporality (history, memory, knowledge), is what recently has put the emphasis on
Traditional Cultures. These cultures are primarily the cultures of others spatially
or temporally, ethnic and cultural minorities. Under the logic of multiculturalism
these become of all human beings, and indispensable to configure a true world
community or human community. There occurs a sophisticated operation where
differences must be assimilated: the whole appropriates the parts. This acquires
coherence through consumption in the normalization of Intangible Heritages, on the
one hand; and Cultural Tourism, on the other. Indeed, in the present context, the
importance of food as cultural heritage is bonded (if not exclusively) to the
importance of food as object of contemporary consumption. Contemporary
consumers have become slippery travellers who move temporally and spatially,
consuming distant poles of their own cultures (in the sense of national, regional) and
the 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 Warde
and Martens (2000: 120). It is no longer high culture fruition that is there to
legitimise dominant social positions, but variety: the others cultures have become
essential determinants of social distinction18. This tendency this capacity- to
consume the other is one of the main factors that ultimately make possible what has

been called cultural tourism. The postulation of Traditional Mexican Food intends
to rescue and preserve a series of cultural practices that define the way of living of
millions of people throughout Mexico. The creation of the ICH by UNESCO comes
to existence during the decade of the indigenous peoples (1995-2004). It seeks for
cultural diversity and social inclusion in the realm of the present temporality, based on
the acceleration of movement and change19. After various documents presented at
UNESCO, the Mexican postulation finally focused on the ceremonies and cultural
practices around corn (maize). Maize as the central element of the cosmogony and
life meaning of many indigenous and rural peoples in Mexico. Cooking and eating
are therefore in the centre of this cosmogony. Food can be transferred tangibly, but
meaning cannot. The meaning underlying the cooking and eating cultures of these
peoples is what constitutes the argument to propose Traditional Mexican Food as an
ICH20. It is these meanings that must be proposed at UNESCO precisely because they
cannot 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 Gastronomy
couple. Increases in spatial mobility both for leisure and for business have made
tourism an important source of income especially for non-wealthy countries. In
Mexico, tourism is the third highest source of income, after oil and remittances from
migrants, Mexico being the seventh most popular tourist destination in the world
(WTO 2001). Furthermore, according to the WTO, tourism will be the first economic
activity of the world by the year 2020. Tourism is therefore an increasingly
competitive 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 - people
who at the same time are excluded from the whole tourist process. Precisely this
effort to include these people into the realm of tourism, as active members, is what
has been labeled sustainable tourism (a derivative of cultural tourism).
The recent discourse of Mexican food places food as one of the major cultural goods
to be offered in tourism. In 2002, a web page of the Ministry of Tourism reviewed
some of the major attractions of the region (www.mexico-travel.com):
[] whether one comes to explore the archaeological treasures, wander
through the colonial cities, or simply relax on the beautiful beaches, rest
assured, one will take home memories and some of the magic of Mexico
as well. (in Coronado/Hodge 2004: 89)
Archaeological sites represent the greatness of the Pre-Hispanic cultures; the colonial
cities 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 market
economy where modernity is apparent and consumable along with the natural
resources 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

of opportunity for tourism development; the same web page referred to above
advertises:
There are several hidden treasures just waiting to be explored. Ancient
Aztec pyramids, authentic foods and fantastic shopping. Whether you're
looking to visit past civilizations or simply lie on the beach and work on
your 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 possibility
to represent the greatness of the Pre-Hispanic and the colonial pasts, and also the
ideals of modernity in a consumption culture as developed in liberal economies.
Another aspect comes to light, however: the entrance of the indigenous peoples and
the popular sectors, both urban and rural, as important elements in this companionship
of 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 worth
showing as heterogeneous yet harmonious. Mexican food, in relation to tourism, is
grounded on a principle of complacency: mexicanity as unity, consensus and
harmony. Ultimately, food constitutes the main present exchange coin of Mexicans as
a whole whole meaning unity- in the international scene, where tourism is
primordial.
Recently, Rodolfo Elizondo, the Mexican Minister of Tourism, declared that the
postulation of the Traditional Mexican Food at UNESCO is important because
gastronomy is a key factor when deciding a tourist destination. The efforts towards
the development of culture and tourism of the Ministry of Tourism and the National
Council 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 around
food and tourism. Both agencies together, along with other private and public
institutions, have been promoting the postulation through the second half of the year
2005. The emphasis is put on Mexican gastronomy, while the references to the
traditional cultures, the meanings of food in its traditional context (as it was
postulated) and the people that sustain these traditional cultures are omitted. The
content 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 a
conflict when intending to represent Traditional Mexican food (traditional
knowledge). The tangible representation of the alleged Intangible Cultural Heritage
has replaced the intangible cultural practices that support it: the signifier imposed over
the signified (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Laclau 2005; see also Buenfil 1998 and
Dallmayr 1989) and communication has shifted. In the context of this postulation,
gastronomy has reproduced its operations and marginalized Traditional Mexican
Food.
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 increasing
complexity based on an exponential reproduction of distinctions. On the other hand,

Traditional Mexican Food is being organized as a Cultural Heritage to be protected

from gastronomy. Yet, it is only in this form of organization that it can face risk, and
not simply be vulnerable23. In other words, the organization of Traditional Mexican
Food as a Cultural Heritage aims to secure its continuity, but simultaneously creates
risk 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 (and
thus distinctions). As soon as traditional Mexican food enters a process of
reproduction through communication, it must enter dynamics of power of the same
order - communicative.
The postulation has already been rejected by UNESCO (November 2005), but it has
created an important amount of information to be used, both by gastronomy and
traditional Mexican food, as information heritage. The peak of mass tourism appears
as an area of opportunity for both gastronomy and traditional foods. Mass tourism is
still a recent phenomenon that poses too many questions. The increased complexity
of the social systems today, of knowledge, creates an ever-greater space of
uncertainty. The issue of whether tourism is a source of opportunity or a source of
danger in the case of food can only be sought in the production of risk within the
gastronomic system and its structural coupling with traditional food.
Notes
1

Meaning refers to the side of the distinction marked in the process of decision-making: past or
future.
2
Note: Virilio does not use the term risk; he rather uses the term danger. Also note that Virilio
focuses 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 is
emphasized through the notion of space. Space, according to Virilio, tends to be erased by ever
increasing speed. On the contrary, Luhmann didnt pay much attention to the issue of space when
dealing with problems of time. An extensive theorization upon this matter can be found in Virilios
dromology/dromoscopy (1986; 1993; 1996; 2000; 2003; 2005; see also Armitage 2000).
3
For an analysis of risk from the perspective of time see Adam (1990); Adam/Beck/van Loon (2000).
4
The phenomenon of Incorporation is twofold: food enters the persons body and the person enters the
world (social) by eating.
5
It 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 are
attributed labels such as genuine or threatened, are precisely those whose origins and continuity are
to be found in these groups.
6
Before the 19th century 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 was
closed, hermetic and the membership to the social groups was determined by birth and genealogy.
7
This phenomenon is particularly acute as an open and generalized practise in the restaurant
consumption, but this only makes sense in a particular social and historical context.
8
Como sugieren Low y Smith (2005), el espacio pblico est en plena transformacin por su creciente
privatizacin y por su funcin cada vez ms importante como centro de comercio y consumo, ya no de
participacin democrtica, colectiva, o como centros de socializacin abierta.
9
Rebecca Spang explains how the story of Boulanger is more a romantic myth than a historical fact
well founded. The story goes that Boulanger sold a restorative broth, a soup that he claimed had
curative properties (thus the name restaurant). Later he decided to expand his offer and he started
selling a proper dish (lamb legs in white sauce), and with this he raised the opposition of those
official guilds that claimed the exclusive right to sell prepared food. They took Boulanger to trial and
Boulanger won the case. Thus, he was allowed to sell his dish and set precedents for the development
of the restaurant industry. Spang, on the other hand, shows that the structure of the guilds related with
food was particularly complex, and its legal organization could have not been divided into a few clear

attributions. It was necessary a political and social change to create the freedom of trade and its
institutional normalization. However, within this complexity referred by Spang in relation with food
lies 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.
10
Good to eat is not the same as good taste. Let us recall Bourdieus emphasis: The art of drinking
and eating rests undoubtedly as one of the few areas where the popular classes oppose explicitly to the
legitimate art of living. (Bourdieu 1999: 200)
11
Most debates around food in the present are not about food security, which is primordially a matter
of 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 the
approaches vary from one to another. In these sense, food safety is related with distribution and
production because the production and distribution technologies are what make food safe or unsafe to
eat, but it is primordially a matter of consumption because the emphasis is clearly on the
eating/consumption pillar; whereas in the case of food security, what matters primordially is that
there is enough food and the means to take it everywhere.
12
Peter Scholliers and Marc Jacobs are proud to say that in Europe in the twenty-first century, there
are restaurant accommodations for every purse and budget (Jacobs/Scholliers 2003: 8) In most parts
of the world the food offer is huge and fits every purse and budget. Of course, this does not include
those with no purses and budgets.
13
In the contemporary state of things, however, we can see how distribution has overcome production
and consumption by simply looking at the power reached by supermarkets worldwide. This power
establishes with enormous influence (sometimes control indeed) upon both production and
consumption. Another archetypical case is the fast food revolution, where distribution and production
determine consumption all developed through communication. The later emergence of the Slow Food
movement, primordially centred on consumption, opposing the fast food is only possible in the
communication operations within the system and it should not be seen as a rupture of the systems
unity.
14
By these elements I do not mean maize, rice, wine, olive oil, etc., but the symbolic practices and
meanings attached to them.
15
These notions become merely symbolic within the system.
16
Note that modern and pre-modern do not established in a hierarchical relation. These are simply
nominal terms.
17
Note that this conception of power is closer to Foucault than to Luhmann.
18
Julia Kristeva (1982), referred to the construction of the Other - in the imagination of a particular
community - as something fearsome and fascinating at the same time as the abject. This abject has
an enormous influence on the identity of the given particular community by making it develop the
margins that separate it and the abject, and by constituting the abject as the other side of a
distinction: negative identification. Therefore, the community and its abject ultimately develop a
sense of belonging towards each other. In the case of Mexico the other that has been the abject
historically is to be found in the popular and the indigenous. The four claims set out above, where both
branches 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 which
signifier is fixed above a given signified is very much a political issue. (Andersen 2000, 53) It may be
seen as well as the institutional rationalization of the sense of belonging referred above.
19
The political implications that may lie behind UNESCO are not a particular concern of the present
text.
20
Any postulation to be included in the List of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage
must have a tangible expression. In this case is food, yet it is not exactly food that is being argued to
be at risk and the object of safeguarding. In social systems theory, the intangible part of this food is the
medium (Loose Couple), the tangible is its form (Strict Couple).
21
The latter is the agency that developed the postulation of the Traditional Mexican Food, through the
Coordination of Cultural Heritage and Tourism.
22
This is not an analysis of the postulation and its pertinence; therefore I do not consider here the plans
of action proposed to safeguard the Traditional Mexican food, which are indeed the other side of the
postulation.
23
Based on the theoretical framework exposed earlier.

References
Adam, B. (1990) Time and Social Theory. Philadelphia : Temple University Press.

Adam, B; U. Beck and J. Van Loon (2000). The risk society and beyond: critical
issues for social theory. London: SAGE.
Armitage, J. (Ed.) (2000) Paul Virilio: from modernism to hypermodernism
andBeyond. London: SAGE
Barthes, Roland (1985) Reading Brillat-Savarin. In Marshall Blonsky (Ed), On
Signs (pp. 61-75) Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1997) Cool Memories. Taurus: Barcelona.
Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage
Beck, U. (1995) Ecological Politics in the Age of Risk. Cambridge: Polity Press
Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity
Press
Borch, C. (2005). Systemic Power. Luhmann, Foucault, and Analytics of Power.
Acta Sociologica, Vol 48 (2): 155-167
Bourdieu, P. (1999) Distincin. Criterio y bases sociales del gusto. Taurus: Madrid.
Buenfil, R. N. (Coord.), Laclau, E, Mouffe, Ch., Torfing, J., and Zizek, S. (1998)
Debates polticos contemporneos : en los mrgenes de la modernidad. Mexico:
Plaza y Valds.
Coronado, Gabriela/Bob Hodge (2004) El Hipertexto Multicultural en Mxico
Posmoderno, paradojas e incertidumbres. Miguel ngel Porra/CIESAS,
Mxico
Castel, R. (1991) From Dangerousness to Risk. In Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds)
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 181-98) London:
Harvester/Wheatsheaf
Castells, M. (1996) The rise of the network society. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell
Publishers
Castells, M. (1997) The power of identity. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Castells, M. (1997) End of millennium. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Dallmayr, F. (1989) Margins of Political Discourse. Albany: State University of
New
York Press.
Deformes, L. (1998) Checking out the planet: Global representations/local identities
and youth travel. In T. Skelton and G. Valentine (eds) Cool Places:
Geographies of Youth Culture (pp. 175-194). Routledge: New York.
Doorne, S., Ateljevic, I. and Bai, Z. (2003) Representing identities through tourism:
Encounters of ethnic minorities in Dali, Yunnan Province. International
Journal of Tourism Research 5 (1), 1-11.
Douglas, M. (1982) (1986) Risk acceptability according to the social sciences.
London:Routledge & Kegan Paul
Douglas, M. (1992) Risk and blame: essays in cultural theory. London : Routledge.
Douglas, M. and Wildavsky, A. (1982) Risk and culture : an essay on the selection of
technical and environmental dangers. Berkeley : University of California Press.
Elias, N. (1994) The civilizing process. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fernndez-Armesto, F. (2002). Food: A history. PAN: UK
Fischler C. (1988). Food, self, and identity. Social Science Information. 27:275-292.
Fischler, C. (2001). LHomnivore. Poches Odile Jacob.
Foucault, M. (1998) What is an Author? In James D. Faubion (Ed.) Essential works
of Foucault 1954-1984 Aesthetics (pp.205-222) London: The New Press.
Giddens, A. (1990) The consequences of modernity. Cambridge : Polity, 1990
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self-identity : self and society in the late modern
age. Cambridge : Polity Press

Giddens, A. (1992) Living in post-traditional society. In Beck, U., Giddens, A. and

Lash, S., Reflexive modernization : politics, tradition and aesthetics in the
modern social order. Cambridge: Polity Press
Habermas, J. (1989) The structural transformation of the public sphere : an inquiry
into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (2001) Teora de la Accin Comunicativa Vols. I-II. Madrid: Taurus.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, Ch. (1985) Hegemony and socialist strategy : towards a
radical democratic politics. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Low, Setha y Neil Smith (2005). The Politics of Public Space. Routledge: UK
Luhmann, N. (1993) Risk. A sociological theory. USA: Transaction
Publishing.(1995) Introduccin a la teora de sistemas (Lectures Edited by
Javier Torres Navarrete). Universidad iberoamericana/coleccin teora social.
Mxico.
Luhmann, N. (1996) Social Systems. California: Stanford University Press.
Luhmann, N. (1998) Observations on Modernity. California: Stanford University
Press.
MacDonald, D. (1957) A theory of mass culture. IN B. Rosenberg and D. White
(eds) Mass Culture. Illinois: Free Press.
Poulain, J. P. (2002). Sociologies de lalimentation. PUF : Pars.
Spang, Rebecca L. 2001. The invention of the Restaurant, Paris and modern
gastronomic culture. Harvard University Press
Vzquez Moltalbn, Manuel 1997. Contra los Gourmets. Grijalbo-Mondadori:
Barcelona
Virilio, P. (1986) Speed and Politics: an essay on Dromology. New York: Columbia
University.
Virilio, P. (1993) Lespace critique: essai. Broch.
Virilio, P. (1996) El arte del motor: aceleracin y realidad virtual. Buenos Aires:
Ediciones Manantial.
Virilio, P. (2000) Polar Inertia. London: SAGE.
Virilio, P. (2003) Art and Fear. London: Continuum.
Virilio, P. (2004) Negative Horizon. London: Continuum.
Warde, A. and Marten L. (2000). Eating out: Social differentiation, consumption and
pleasure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.