Food heritage as a tourist attraction: the commodification of the Mediterranean Diet, in Chefchaouen (Morocco)

Abstract

Based on the classification of the Mediterranean Diet as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, this article seeks to reflect on the processes of commodification for tourist purposes resulting from it, as well as on the local invention of a gastronomy that is considered to reflect the practices and the assumptions of the Mediterranean Diet. Focusing geographically in Chefchaouen (Morocco), the ethnography carried out allows us to affirm that the processes of heritage conception, invention and transfiguration are not beyond the control of local communities, paying also attention to the heterogeneous and plural dimension not only of the communities themselves, but also their expectations regarding the possible advantages associated with an heritage classification.