April 2024
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Naturaleza y Sociedad Desafíos Medioambientales
In Latin America, the recent interest in valuing regional cuisines (community, ethnic, departmental, national) as heritage has led to the proliferation of initiatives to promote them from multiple strategies and perspectives. This means that, in different countries and voiced by various actors, regional cuisines are considered something appreciated that must be preserved because they represent a particular group and are part of their collective identity (Bak-Geller et al., 2019). Gastronomic heritage is, in this sense, a social and political construction of collective memory, of the figures of us and the other, which are reflected in a reasoned selection of ingredients, preparation techniques, and aesthetic elements, as well as in a historical narrative about the origins and authenticity of the cuisines. Among these heritage initiatives are academic events, gastronomic fairs, recipe books, workshops, contests, gatherings around the stove, numerous publications of different nature around food cultures, among many others, which daily motivate and invite us to reflect on the identity value of the phenomenon of food and cuisine from different places in Latin America and the world in general (Asfora and Saldarriaga Escobar, 2012; Cardon and García-Garza, 2012; Carrasco Henríquez, 2007; De Suremain and Katz, 2009). The texts gathered in this dossier of Naturaleza y Sociedad. Desafíos Medioambientales seek to bring academic work closer to the general public, so that the issues analyzed here around biocultural heritage and conservation practices are relevant, generate criticism, and new reflections among readers from different disciplinary, social, and cultural contexts.