Ressignificação do alimento em roteiros de turismo rural : uma estratégia de desenvolvimento regional no Vale do Rio Pardo - RS - Brasil.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze how the family farmers' agency constructs the meanings and dynamics of food resignification, offered in rural tourism enterprises that comprise the Rota Germânica do Rio Pardinho and the Roteiro Caminhos da Imigração, in the municipalities of Santa Cruz do Sul and Sinimbu/RS. The food has been playing an important role as attractive in rural tourism itineraries within the context of family farming in the Vale do Rio Pardo Valley region. The families, as entrepreneurs, get involved in the tourist activity, and therefore, develop their agency, which represents, their ability to know and act by converting food into a tourist attraction as well as recovering knowledge transmitted from generation to generation. This practice has been adopted by families who opt for rural tourism as a strategy to diversify activities in their properties. For these family farmers, participants of the itineraries, the resignification of the food is processed beyond the cultural and identity expression, and becomes understood as a possibility of income generation, which highlights the role played by food in the dynamics of tourist attraction. This action is the result of social interaction of various social actors involved in the implementation of the itineraries. This context reveals that subjects practice their agency when they decide to change the reality which imposes the tobacco as the only activity that is worth to be developed in this region. The theory chosen in order to understand how the agency is practiced by the social actors was the Actor Perspective, a theoretical and methodological approach proposed by Norman Long (1982; 2001; 2007). This approach recognizes the interrelationship of factors over internal and external relations in social processes and allows to capture how the subjects face and enjoy the changes and new factors that surround them. In addition, it promotes the possibility for identification of strategies used by individuals and by families. This research is based on theThe qualitative method and the techniques for data collection were, semi-structured interview, field diary, in loco observation and analysis of documents and secondary data. Data analysis was carried out from the actor perspective. The results show that the resignification of food in the studied itineraries contributes to increase of income, autonomy and quality of life of the families, especially for women, boosting the rural tourism in the region and, thus, contributing economically and socially for the regional development.