КУЛТУРНОТО НАСЛЕДСТВО КАТО РЕСУРС В ИКОНОМИКАТА. ПРИМЕРЪТ НА МАЛКИ ХЛЕБОПЕКАРНИ В БЪЛГАРИЯ
CULTURAL HERITAGE AS A RESOURCE IN ECONOMY. THE CASE OF SMALL BAKERIES IN BULGARIA

Author(s): Ivanka Petrova
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Customs / Folklore, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure
Published by: ЮГОЗАПАДЕН УНИВЕРСИТЕТ »НЕОФИТ РИЛСКИ«
Keywords: cultural heritage; economy; cultural approaches; small bread-makers; construction of heritage
Summary/Abstract: The trends of healthy nutrition spreading worldwide can be observed by the example of the extending consumer niche, oriented to the demand for bread, made by hand and baked in small bakeries. The entrepreneurs, owners of such bakeries I investigated in 2015, claim that in the process of their professional work and by its results they have been endeavoring to fit in that niche oriented to healthy and nature-conforming nutrition. Apart from laying emphasis on the use of maximum high quality products in bread-making, they also apply cultural approaches in order to construct the image of bread as a cultural value, inherited from the past, and to conceptualize the ways and technologies of its production as social actions marking “a return to traditions”. The entrepreneurs display the production and marketing of a product of a very high symbolic value, exceeding and even incomparable with its market value. In this way small bread-makers practically become part in the generation of cultural heritage. The article presents some cultural approaches of small bread-makers in Bulgaria, whereby bread-making has been constructed as cultural heritage. I identified these approaches in the self-presentation of the members of the branch organization “Bulgarian Guild of Bakers” (constituted in 2014) during their participation in the Crafts Fair in Plovdiv in April 2015. For the theoretical framework of my research I rely on the concepts of cultural heritage and its construction and instrumentalization, developed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, David Lowenthal, Herman Bausinger, Ingo Schneider and Robert Pekham.

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