Settler colonial space-time and the storying of southern Arizona's foodscapes

In 2015, The City of Tucson, Arizona became recognized as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, a title that has become central to its food tourism efforts and other projects of “gastrodevelopment.” This title recognizes Tucson's unique and diverse food heritage and agricultural histories, which have been molded into a food story that has been articulated in the application to UNESCO and in local media and branding materials. This food story – a set of narratives about the region that have congealed into a more or less standardized form – is not merely a story, but holds symbolic and economic value for those telling it. In this article, we ask: what stories are told about Tucson's food histories, and who is telling them? Through an analysis and reflection on local food media, we approach Tucson's ‘official’ food story as a settler food story: a form of narration that centers and upholds white and settler conceptions of heritage, space, and place. Our analysis demonstrates how Indigenous knowledge and practices are portrayed as part of the past, separate from ‘modernity’; how Indigenous spaces are imagined as empty frontiers awaiting discovery by cunning white artisans and curious consumers; and how white subjectivities, discourses, and practices of consumption occupy the center of Tucson's ‘official’ food story. In closing, we argue that these story lines – ones which operate under the banner of gastronomic ‘multiculturalism’ – play a role in reproducing forms of historical erasure, symbolic violence, and inequity within Tucson's mainstream gastrodevelopment project and contemporary food system. In closing, we call for these stories to be pluralized, reimagined, and brought into alignment with food justice and Indigenous food futures.