Food as a Unifier? Rural and Urban Food Festivals in Central Slovakia

Abstract

The paper focuses on food festivals in rural and urban localities in Central Slovakia. Food events and festivals are popular and spread all over the world as it is stressed in a lot of scholarly literature (e.g. Watson, Caldwell, Eds., 2007; Timothy, 2016; Klein, Watson, 2016). They are celebrations of communities and their heritage, and expressions of their identity. They include gastronomy events presenting local culinary specialities, food trade fairs, wine and food tastings, farmers’ markets or culinary competitions. The paper presents selected festivals in the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region. The main objective is to show the purpose, character and role of rural and urban food festivals with a special focus on heritage aspects and to identify their differences including the current political contexts.