The main purpose of the study is to look into CAMRA – the Campaign for Real ale by examining series of guidebooks that published by this social institute, discussing how the discourse and narratives are constructed for this specific spectrum of British culture and the construction of local pub and beer scene.
The literature review tends to look into some ideas associated with British pub and beer tourism.
First, I put the topic under the context of food tourism and explore the idea as food being a creative tool and antidote to mass tourism that further develop a distinctive touristic activity in the tourism industry. Next, I’ll provide a thorough elaboration on British pub and beer culture, discussing both of which from a certain perspective and how the two manage to develop and represent their heritage value, as well as unfolding their history and current circumstances. Last but not least, I will review literatures in terms of guides and guidebooks, discussing tourist guide from two different aspects, including general acknowledgement of “guide” and its function, to guidebooks that specifically look on describing food, taste and consumption. I will first discuss on food tourism and explores the connections between creativity and food in the next following.
Creativity & Food Tourism
Food tourism is also known as culinary tourism or gastronomy tourism. Indeed, there are los of different definition of food tourism coming from different considerations and purposes, but general definition doesn’t seem to differ but rather share some commons. Food tourism is practically about tourists traveling to pursue ultimate and authentic experience in food consumption that connects food, place, and culture.
However, according to World Food Travel Association, while “culinary” technically could be related anything to food and drink, the institute stopped using the term “culinary tourism” since 2012 in that research among foodies indicating that the word “culinary” is rather elitist. “Food tourism” should be inclusive and includes the food carts and street vendors as much as the locals-only pubs, wineries, or one-of-a-kind restaurants. There should be something for everyone in the food tourism industry (http://www.worldfoodtravel.org/what-is-food-tourism/).
World Food Travel Association defines food tourism as “the pursuit and enjoyment of unique and memorable food and drink experience, both far and near,” and by clarifying “far and near”, the definition notifies that we could also be food travelers in our own regions, cities and neighborhoods in addition to traveling across the world to eat or drink. Food blog Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance also claims that “culinary tourism is not just limited to gourmet food. It is about what is unique, authentic and memorable about the delicious stories regions have to tell that often includes farmers, cheese mongers, fishermen, brewers, winemakers and everyone in between”
(https://ontarioculinary.com/resources/culinary-tourism-101/). Food tourism nowadays seems to be perceived and emphasized as more about finding the local back, notwithstanding definitions in terms of food tourism varied based on different perception, confirmed by Boniface (2003) in Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food and Drink:
It can mean food and drink from within short distance enough for the item to stay manifestly fresh without help of refrigeration and to be consumed quickly after growing or producing. Local may be understood according to several criteria such as by soil and terrain, climate and environment, or socially and politically, and of course, culturally which can cover all the other types.
(Boniface, 2003. p. 31)
Within this highly globalized and homogenized world, the fact that the uniqueness of local food as both cultural and economic resources have taken up the food image to another level becoming something more meaningful, as Blakey (2012) proposed,
…what was once strictly something needed for survival has become many different things (for some of the world, anyway): art, entertainment, pleasure, a hobby, a cultural artifact, an identity, a celebration, something to be experienced.
(Blakey, 2012, p. 150)
In facing a highly globalized world where cultural homogenization has been quite prevalent and widespread around the world, food tourism become a crucial part in contemporary experience economy in that food is known as key part of all cultures, a major element of global intangible heritage and an increasingly important attraction for tourists (Richards, 2012). Food can become distinctive elements of brand image in places, help create distinctiveness (Richards, 2012) and construct a holistic “food-scape” which unite local culture, creativity and food.
Food tourism could be seen as type of creative tourism, in which we no longer look on cultural tourism simply as a “passive” leisure activity for tourists collecting “symbols” like sites, images, information from museums, galleries or other so-called “high-cultural” institutions. Creative tourism has now grown rapidly in the past decades, reflecting the growing desire of consumers aching for something new and interactive that they could engage in and attach themselves to local network society (Richards, 2011).
The term “creative tourism” was initially created by Richards and Raymond (2000), in which they see the notion of “creativity” as a tool to solve social problems, knit community together and revitalize local culture, art and craft production in association with the tourism industry. Several reasons conjure up the popularity of creative tourism, including the need for tourism to re-invent itself and for destinations to do something different in a saturated market (Richards, 2012), as well
as making it much more available for “niche tourism” (Richards, 2011) to be identified and developed, supporting small-scale businesses on an indigenous level.
Creative tourism is about experiencing novelty and authenticity and these legitimatize even more to the growing interest in food tourism. Food tourism embodies the notion of “authenticity” in which local food and cuisine are the most quintessential way to learn local culture and tradition.
Authenticity has always been a major selling point when it comes to traveling. Tourist is kind of a contemporary pilgrim that is constantly in quest of authenticity in other ‘times’ and other ‘places’
(Urry & Larsen, 2011, p. 10). Tourists travel not just to marvel at sites and sights, but rather engage in understanding how the locals work or live, being able to feel the aura of city, lifestyle that differentiates from what they used to know.
Pubs, as tourist attractions, offer a contrived indirect experience, an artificial product to be consumed in the very places where the “real” thing takes place (Culler, 1990). Tourists are in quest of signs of traditional English pub as pub is simply the easiest and most convenient way to meet people and feel the “real” British vibe. Public house is a ‘liminal’ realm (Edensor, 2011, p. 545) where tourists are constantly searching for state of enjoyment where they could let loose and have fun, thus getting down to the pubs and mingling with locals seem to do the job just right.
For tourists, this is the place to be. These moving, viewing others within pubs are obligatory for collective consumption of place (Urry, 2011). Pubs, as “tourist places”, are inscribed in circles of performances, where it could be taken up as spaces that embody “authenticity” and “staged authenticity” (MacCannell, 1989) at the same time. It’s a “stage” that perform, present and “stage”
all the “oldness” and sense of nostalgia at the forefront, while in the meantime, it is also a
“backstage” that carries a so-called “behind-the-scene” characteristics, as a specific realm where you get to immerse yourself in the “real” British culture so to speak.
Flows of people, image and information within space or even on a global aspect, have criss-crossed national and social borders at significant level. This has not only enabled food tourism to serve as a crucial vehicle for authentic food experience, but a catalyst for boosting local and regional identities, cultural and economic development, as well as social and community regeneration.
Some of the texts include Duruz’s (1999) research looking into the connection between food, place, memory and identity through nostalgic traces of ‘the rural’ in tourist and travel writing that extend the discussion in politics of globalization, nostalgic commodification and power inscription.
Everett and Aitchison (2008) proposed the examination into role of food tourism in developing and sustaining regional identities in the context of production and consumption in the countryside. Sims (2008) also addressed on how local food can play a crucial part in sustainable tourism because tourists’ hearts and desire are constantly in quest of authenticity within holiday experience.
The reason to refer pub and beer tourism to creative tourism, is that the practice of pub/beer tourism in the UK is, in major aspect, to try to find “locals” back and bring up more awareness for general public realizing the importance of these cultural assets. Creative tourism, on a large scale, is about connecting tourists and the locals, as well as the intention of finding “locals” back (Richards, 2012). Creative tourism is a networked tourism (Richards, 2012) in which producers and consumers are linked and encountered to co-create a general value they hope to share with. It speaks about how tourists are supposed to be engaged and intermingled with local communities.
Likewise, pub tourism is a bodily sensational experience in which tourists get to embody and participate within the “enclaved” space of encounters (i.e the British pub). Creative tourism attempts to construct tourists’ autonomy in experiencing a destination. It is flexible, distinctive and set adaptation to local contexts.
Heritage & Representation
This section will first discuss the British pub from historical and cultural aspects, exploring its social and cultural values in detail. The celebrated British real ale will be discussed from the same perspective as well. As a result that authenticity has now become a key selling and branding strategy in staging destination and enhancing local development, the following will unfold the significance of two cultural assets, and how they become a heritage that is worth protecting for.
Heritages, often as visible markers of the past, have come to populate more and more land and cityscapes (MacDonald, 2011). Heritage sites have become key components of ‘place-marketing’
and ‘image management’, thus enable cultural tourism to widely expand, bringing visitors from across the world to places that can claim a heritage worth seeing (MacDonald, 2011).
Despite being a symbol or marker of a certain epoch, Waterton and Watson (2010) also indicated that heritages are not simply sets of objects displayed, but processes involving the construction of meaning that frame and reveal the past, further constituted and represented in the present. The communicative act between places and people is invariably potent with representations (Staiff, Bushell & Watson, 2013, p. 1). The production of heritage is a social practice that seek to explore, capture and express meanings of past by collecting different actors like image, text, objects, artifacts etc that once bonded together and left traces behind. While representation, on the other hand, is a key cultural practice that gives meanings and helps processes tourists’ understanding in visual culture as a vital mean to translate discourse of heritages (Staiff, Bushell & Watson, 2013, p. 3).
Waterton and Watson (2010) specifically ignited discussion in terms of the linkage between heritage and visual culture, suggesting that visuality will always be either centrally or partially involved in the production of heritage, and that visuality is greatly associated with material culture.
Public house, as part of the fundamental national culture itself, is a phenomenal cultural asset and heritage that has become a significant visual marker when it comes to tourism in the UK. As much as the communicative act between heritage and people is about how tourists are physically involved in the space (Staiff, Bushell & Watson, 2013, p. 2), the Victorian architecture and its ravishing interior design typify and substantiate that heritage is often better understood and appreciated with high level degree of visual presentation amid all sensual experiences in visual, verbal, sonic and somatic.
However, the relationship between places and tourists is more than this and is rather complex because heritages are not just sets of objects for tourists to gaze at, but are processes that involve construction of meanings and signification, which makes places or encounter spaces like British pubs hard to locate and explain within the tourism studies. MacCannell (1990) pointed out the budding links between the signified and the signifier to discuss signification of sites and sights, while Urry (2011) also problematized the complex notions between places and the gaze in cultural representation and tourism consumption. Places and spaces are important concepts to be negotiated in heritage and tourism and they should not be simply located as places where people, objects and information encounter and circulate within. Power relations are also manifested within heritage industry. The notion of power is often constructed, encountered and regulated within the place, and it will be discussed in more detail in the next section in terms of the social and cultural role of British pub within English society from past to present.
Going down the pub!
A pub, formally public house, is a drinking establishment not just a place for drinking beer, wine or cider, but a unique social centre and focal point of community life in villages, towns and cities throughout the country. Pubs are seen as the heart of the England. English public houses have long been a social phenomenon since the nineteenth century. This traditional social institution represents a significant position, “an icon of everyday life” confirmed by Bennett & Watson (2003). British pub is a complex space where all the mundane things take place in there carry social and cultural codes in different aspects.
Pub is a social institution and a significant role and ‘site’ in British everyday life, as well as a symbolic role in British working-class culture carrying a strong masculine embodiment. For great majority of males, or more specifically, working-class males, British pub is more of a “private”
space for them, a “home” from home in which pubs are often seen as “sites” of everyday experience where men could easily pop in, loosen up and have a pint after hard day of work, for everyday life is about regularity, repetition and habits that individual performs on “stages” and doing tasks routinely and on daily basis (Bennett & Watson, 2002). Pub has long been a crucial part of the imagery of the British working-class culture. It used to be a dominant male enjoyment and simply a “liminal” space specifically for men.
Public houses and the like have been portrayed as refuges for men escaping the monotonous toll of factory work, from the misery of unemployment and big-city alienation.
(Clark, 1983, p. 2)
British pub used to be a male monopoly social space in which social class of the participants in this scene was extremely exclusive and limited. The pub was used to reinforce the cult of masculinity (Bennett & Watson, 2002, p. 200). Gender stereotyping could easily seen in this
community in which there were times when women were considered to be socially inferior based on their marital roles or status and received unequal access to the pub (Melissa Cole: CAMRA at 40, p. 53). A key survey conducted by Leyshon (2008) provided an alteration in examining links between gender and identity, as well as female embodiment within public houses and the countryside, discussing how public house as a space of performance, providing young women a stage where identities are to be conducted, negotiated and reproduced.
As time went by, what was once strictly a space for “private” or to say, “internal public” are nowadays opened to the “external public” in which there are more and more different types of pubs catering to different markets such as family pubs, gay pubs, or country pubs where you could listen to live music all night long. There are also proliferation of pubs that go with food service where it could be more family-oriented offering alternatives and encouraging people to eat out on a much more regular basis. The pub sector has transformed significantly providing various entertainments that it has become a mirror image of home, a home from home in a different sense, expressive of a certain lifestyle and taste (Bennett & Watson, 2002, p. 209). The proliferation of pubs has created a wider and diverse demand for different social groups with its culture remodeled and revitalized into more dynamic perspective.
However, despite of the fact that the transformation of pub economy and social image has been quite successful and has reached to a wider audience, there are also concerns in terms of whether pubs become more commercial as well as local culture and villagescape being commodified into economic and tourism resource. The countryside, elements of ‘folk culture’ and tradition are often viewed as a commodity or commodifiable symbols attached to particular places, peoples, products and lifestyle (Maye, Ilbery & Kneafsey, 2005, p. 835). The once “authentic” public ritual becomes a staged performance, a cultural “commodity” (Cohen, 1988, p. 381). It is worried that the once
so-public” that try to meet tourists’ demands and tastes. However, Cohen (1988) also argued that commoditization does not necessarily destroy the meaning of cultural landscapes, for what used to be considered as the “internal public” may become a culturally significant self-representation before an “external public”, as well as preserving local landscape from being demolished.
…the emergence of a tourist market frequently facilitates the preservation of a cultural tradition which would otherwise perish. It enables its bearers to maintain a meaningful local or ethnic identity which they might otherwise have lost.
(Cohen, 1988, p. 382)
As more and more village pubs are refurbished and remodeled, whether into preserving the Victorian-vibe, modern, stylistic, or eccentric looks, pubs are embedded in this whole picture as a tool and medium to re-invent and provoke certain memory lanes or on the other hand, to make a step into new cultural and economic outlook.
The pub sector of the economy has long been facing challenge and the number of pubs has been in significant decline due to different reasons, including capitalism and state control, transformation of social structure, industrialization, urbanization, accessibility toward alcohol consumption, large array of competitors and regulatory administration. According to BBPA (British Beer and Pub Association), total number of pubs in the UK estimated up to 2013 stands at approximately 48,000 left in business, drastically descending from around 52,000 in 2009, 51178 in 2010, 50395 in 2011, and 49433 in 2012 (http://www.beerandpub.com/statistics), indicating a significant plunge in pub industry. Capitalism has proliferated the ownership of pubs being concentrated in the hands of a few brewery conglomerates (Bennett & Watson, 2003, p. 204). Regulatory factor such as stricter drink-driving laws being adopted swiftly lead to more pub closures in order to reduce the number of car-based trips, as well as overall consumption of alcohol (Everitt & Bowler, 2003).
Other factors also have to do with the changing habit in terms of the way people consume alcohol, in which many of whom do not usually drink in old-fashioned pubs or participate in traditional village activities (this has been seen specifically among young age groups). Young social groups often prefer new leisure choices and different drinking habits and locations such as fancy clubs, wine bars or just drink at home with video games and canned beer (Everitt & Bowler, 2003; CAMRA at 40). More recently, consumers’ tastes have shifted as well, from beer to lager, wine, and a range of other types of mixed drinks (Bennett & Watson, 2003, p. 205), in which this also put pressure on CAMRA, trying to reverse the trend to lager and keg beer back to good quality
Other factors also have to do with the changing habit in terms of the way people consume alcohol, in which many of whom do not usually drink in old-fashioned pubs or participate in traditional village activities (this has been seen specifically among young age groups). Young social groups often prefer new leisure choices and different drinking habits and locations such as fancy clubs, wine bars or just drink at home with video games and canned beer (Everitt & Bowler, 2003; CAMRA at 40). More recently, consumers’ tastes have shifted as well, from beer to lager, wine, and a range of other types of mixed drinks (Bennett & Watson, 2003, p. 205), in which this also put pressure on CAMRA, trying to reverse the trend to lager and keg beer back to good quality