Consuming Authenticities: Time, Place and the Past in the Construction of "Authentic" Foods and Drinks

Cultural products often depend on ideas about authenticity for commercial success, eliciting emotional responses from consumers and evoking a sense of local, ethnic or even national identity. To designate a product as authentic can be a politically, economically and culturally charged process involving multiple levels of meaning. Authenticity can be an official legal status; it can be used as a cynical marketing ploy; it can reflect a sense of cultural belonging; it can constitute a defence of particular production practices. Such ideas of authenticity are fundamentally constructed through narratives about the past and future, and employ various temporal concepts used to join together distinct pasts, presents and futures. Producing or consuming a product deemed authentic offers a means of enacting or performing values associated with particular interpretations of the past or visions for the future. In this sense, authenticity can be a central ingredient in the celebration, commemoration or valorisation of different identities, cultures, histories and socio-economic practices. However, it can also marginalise, exclude, exploit or damage others. Consuming Authenticities will examine how and why narratives about the past and future are used to construct ideas about the authenticity of specific cultural products. The project will reflect closely on the power relationships-across socio-economic, racial, gender and/or generational lines-that are involved in prioritising, selecting and excluding different temporal narratives from these ideas of authenticity.

These questions will be addressed through four case studies on foods and drinks that are, or have been, emblematic of particular identities and cultures around the world: pulque (an alcoholic drink from Central Mexico), acarajé (a street snack from Brazil), flaounes (celebration Easter pies from Cyprus) and Welsh cider. Exploring relatively everyday items of cultural consumption from multi-national contexts will enable us to incorporate diverse perspectives and experiences into the research process and explore how ideas about authenticity are received by audiences from different cultural backgrounds. A range of non-HE collaborators, including food writers, cooks, producers, retailers, and migrant community groups, will be invited to contribute their own impressions about the authenticities of each product during participatory events; in turn, their views will be integrated into the project's central output, a recipe-style book.

This project will examine how and why temporal concepts that are routinely mobilised to connect together understandings of the past, experiences of the present, and visions for the future -like origins, timelessness and tradition- are used to construct authenticity in different contexts. We will also assess the relationship between these temporal categories and the spatial, or place-based, concepts that contribute to constructions of authenticity, such as locality, homeland and metropolis. By bringing together temporal and place-based concerns, the project seeks to develop the CFF theme by providing a methodological model for analysing other temporal concepts (e.g. progress, legacy) and how other cultural products and experiences (e.g. heritage sites) are constructed as authentic.

The project draws on academic expertise from several disciplines, including history, post-colonial literature, linguistics and anthropology, and explores four cases that range across two centuries and two continents. This academic team will work closely with the People's Collection Wales, a project partner with extensive experience of public engagement, to engage food producers, promoters, consumer groups and the general public. We will therefore embed knowledge exchange in the research process, so that cross-disciplinary and cross-period insights inform the different case studies, and a genuine dialogue can occur between academics and non-HEI stakeholders.

Who will benefit?
This research has the potential to benefit a wide range of non-academic stakeholders, who will be actively engaged in the research process and in the communication of its results. A key institution from the public sector, the People's Collection Wales, will be the main project partner, collaborating in our main events and in the production of a central output, the recipe book. Additional collaborators will be recruited from the business and industry sector, including craft cider producers in the UK, food writers and cooks. In the longer term, we will seek to engage producers of pulque and acarajé through our main outputs and dissemination strategy, but the international logistics of involving them directly in the exploratory stages of the project would be unfeasible. Beyond these two sectors, our research will also directly involve groups from the general public, especially migrant communities from Mexico, Brazil and Cyprus, and devotees of cider festivals, whose narrative accounts of each product under examination will also be sought through the project's research process.

How might they benefit?
The principle impact the project aims to have for these three groups of stakeholders is the development of cultural awareness and knowledge regarding several key strands of our research. Working collaboratively with the People's Collection Wales will contribute to its mission to safeguard the cultural memory of Wales and to spread interest in Welsh history and culture, particularly by focusing on foods and drinks as products deeply connected with everyday material life, identity and cultural expression. By bringing together analysis of Welsh cultural produce and the role of history in the construction of its authenticity, with case studies from around the world, the project will facilitate cross-cultural exchange of experience and knowledge. Similarly, the project will document aspects of past and contemporary Cypriot, Mexican and Brazilian culture, benefiting the respective communities. Producers, food writers and cooks will also benefit from the research in cultural terms, as the project will help to improve their awareness of the complexity of relationships - temporal, spatial, and material - involved in the culinary sphere. For a diverse section of the general public, the project will help to generate greater awareness of how historical knowledge and acts of consumption can support meaningful, respectful and inclusive cultural dialogue, or, conversely, can exclude, disrespect or marginalise other cultural perspectives.

The business and industry sector could also benefit in commercial and economic terms from the research. Our project will raise public consciousness about particular products, their histories, and cultural significance, with the potential effect of improving their commercial performance. While the project intends to evaluate the negative, as well as the positive, consequences of selectivity in the construction of authenticity, and, ultimately, to show that authenticity is a constructed and contested category, it is nevertheless likely that our discussions of these cultural products will render them more visible, interesting and desirable to new public consumers. Similarly, there is a potential environmental impact for business and industry stakeholders and the general public. As our research seeks to unite temporal perspectives with the more spatial, or place-based, concerns of other research on cultural authenticity, the project could increase awareness of sustainability issues in relation to food production and consumption. Our analysis of the ways in which each product's historical significance, origins and traditional status are depicted to construct ideas about authenticity will draw attention to broader processes of change in the production, transport and consumption of these, and other, foods and drinks, and thus contribute to wider environmental debates about sustainability.