Traditional Culture and Contemporary Economy: Constructing Cultural Heritage Through Bread-Making
Traditional Culture and Contemporary Economy: Constructing Cultural Heritage Through Bread-Making

Summary/Abstract: The trends of healthy nutrition spreading worldwide can be observed on the example of the expanding consumer niche oriented to the demand for hand-made bread baked in small bakeries. Based on a specific example of a group of bread-makers, the owners of small bakeries in Bulgaria, the article discusses the ways of constructing cultural heritage and its particular use as a resource in this economic context. Apart from laying emphasis on the use of maximally high quality products in bread-making, the small entrepreneurs also apply cultural methods in order to construct the image of bread as a cultural value, inherited from the past, and to conceptualise the ways and technologies of its production as social actions marking “a return to traditions”. The research presents the narrative strategies of the bread-makers, whereby bread-making has been structured as cultural heritage. I identified these strategies in the self-presentation of the members of the branch organisation, the Bulgarian Guild of Bakers, during their participation in the Spring Crafts Fair in Plovdiv between the 23rd and 26th of April 2015.

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