An Ethnographic Research on Slow Food Movement: The Case of Germiyan Village in Çeşme/İzmir

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to critically examine the development of tourism in Germiyan Village through the Slow Food Movement and the process of transformation from an agricultural society to a service-producing tourism village from an ethnographic perspective. In this context, the experiences and daily life practices of the local people towards this process are analysed with a qualitative paradigm. Face-to- face in-depth interviews with fourty-two people living in Germiyan village and four months of ethnographic observations between 2018 and 2019 years were utilised to collect qualitative data. Within the scope of this research, various results have been revealed, the most important of which is that the Slow Food Movement makes significant contributions to the development and diversification of tourism and creates important opportunities locally. However, at the point that it cannot be made sustainable as a Slow Food village. It has been concluded that commodified local cultural values override common goals, and the commodity has become a goal rather than a marketing tool. As a result of this situation, it does not comply with the main principles of the Slow Food Movement and is directed towards a failure process which might some people learn some lessons. In order to eliminate this failure process, success examples of the reproduction of the knowledge gained by the local people with their socio- cultural accumulation and its transformation into a sustainable tourism focus have also been identified. Bu