Gabriel Christoph Maria Laeis

Citation

Thesis Title
What's on the Menu? How the cuisine of large-scale, upmarket tourist resorts shapes agricultural development in Fiji

Read article at Massey Research Online:

Tourism is an economic backbone for many small island development states. Nevertheless, a significant share of food is imported for tourists. Research on the impediments of agriculture-tourism linkages has taken mostly an economistic approach. This study, however, takes a cultural perspective and investigates how the cuisine of large-scale, upmarket tourist resorts shapes agricultural development in Fiji. Mr Laeis employed ethnographic methods during a four-month field trip to Fiji. Participation in a resort kitchen, field visits to resorts, farms and food intermediaries, interviews as well as document analysis enabled a rich representation of local viewpoints. Large-scale resorts present Fijian cuisine either as tokenistic 'island night shows', or in fusion concepts that cater to a few affluent guests. Fijian chefs rarely perceive their own cuisine as valuable, due to decades of Western-dominated tourism. Accordingly, the use of local produce is low and purposeful development of tourism-agriculture linkages is rare.

Supervisors
Professor Regina Scheyvens
Dr Carolyn Morris