Epistemological approach to gastronomy

Abstract:

Gastronomy is an expression of a relatively new concept, but also ambiguous from the common belief against systematic knowledge. This article is a bibliographic review of the epistemologies of the different academic disciplines that have enriched its content, as well as an approach to establish the basis and foundation of the epistemology of gastronomic knowledge in its evolutionary process. With this purpose, the existing interrelations between gastronomy and etymology, history, sensory physiology, semiology, socio-anthropology, linguistics, social psychology, economy and administration, nutrition, agricultural sciences and culinary activity were examined, based on secondary sources whose contributions had a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary perspective. Thus, from ten different approaches to the theory of gastronomic knowledge, the scope, foundation, interactions and essence of gastronomy are discussed. In the synthesis, gastronomic knowledge is presented as that academic knowledge related to food, from three perspectives: i) that of the health sciences (food as an essential condition for life, which guarantees the physiological functions of the organism and the balance of the body and the mind in their relations with the environment; ii) that of the sciences of primary production and other economic and social activities, within a normative framework of healthiness, sustainability and economic feasibility; iii) the social sciences (food as the basis of socio-economic organization systems and power hierarchies, expressed in cultural food practices and as a creative element in imaginaries, cultural identities and codes of social behavior, which are fundamental to the process of human interaction and social coexistence). From these, an academic, multidisciplinary explanation is attempted of the different functions/processes that take place in any food system, in the search for a homeostatic balance in a society and culture manifested in a given space-time.

Año de publicación:

2019

Keywords:

• Epistemology of gastronomy
• Gastronomy
• Gastronomic knowledge
• Gastronomy interrelations
• Systematic knowledge

Fuente:

scopus