Constructing durian terroir and geographical indications in Penang,Malaysia |
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| Authors: | Christopher Airriess |
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| Institution: | Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA |
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| Abstract: | The tropical fruit durian in Southeast and East Asia has witnessed a surge in popularity in the past two decades to assume the rank of a fetishized commodity. This research investigates the construction of the multidimensional concept of terroir as applied to the durian economy of Penang, Malaysia based on personal interviews with orchard owners and state government officials to strategically embed the local in the global through the promotion of agritourism. While environmental terroir is a contingent dimension, the construction of a place bound cultural terror is anchored in a strong cultivation tradition, cultivar diversity, and a historical sense of community. This research deepens the cultural terroir dimension in two ways. First, it injects the otherwise aspatial concept of refinement to the cultural terroir narratives of orchard owners allowing the on-farm tourist consumption experience to be more geographically rooted. Second, it conceptually links cultural terroir to the marketing terroir instrument of the Balik Pulau geographical indication; while functioning as a governance tool to prevent fraud and to construct a place bound product valorization and differentiation within an expanding and larger scale durian economy, it also indirectly assists in preserving agro-diversity and local identity. |
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| Keywords: | terroir durian Penang geographical indications agritourism |
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