Research project The aim of the project is to highlight culture’s role in the sustainability challenges and opportunities within the gastronomic sector, and how culture can contribute to a more sustainable gastronomic sector in Sweden.
The way stakeholders understand sustainability shapes how sustainability is enacted in a particular context. To explore the relationship between sustainability and gastronomy from a cultural perspective, is necessary to incorporate the norms and beliefs of stakeholders within the gastronomic sector, the particularities of food products and the relevance of food culture. This project uses two cases which can be regarded as two entry points to explore sustainability within gastronomy:“Storage and preservation practices within restaurants” and “From lake to plate: wild Arctic char in Sápmi".
By studying “Storage and preservation practices within restaurants” a window to how restaurant professionals negotiate their daily work and routines of food procurement, preparation, service, and storage against their own understandings of sustainability is opened.
By following the wild Arctic char as a gastronomic product from being caught to being consumed in a gastronomic setting, i.e., restaurants or linked to gastrotourism, this project tries to broaden the perspectives regarding sustainability within gastronomy. The voices of Indigenous people, the Sámi, are included in this case, because they are relevant actors in the wild Arctic char supply chain within the gastronomic sector in Sweden. These empirical cases portray specific views on what sustainability means and how sustainability is envisioned in the gastronomic sector.
While each perspective gives an essential piece of the puzzle, their connection contributes to a more holistic understanding of sustainability within gastronomy and there is a lack of research that embraces this complexity. This project sets out to contribute to this research gap by connecting these different perspectives, based on empirical material.
