No abstract

Food's role in tourism is multifaceted and complex. Food is not only essential to the body but is also integral to the experience; moreover, it is elusively embedded within society, culture, politics, institutions, and economy. Although food's complexity is conceptually explored within tourism studies, empirical investigations into the consumption of food are few and far between. In this study, we contribute an empirical analysis that employs both quantitative and qualitative data from fieldwork in a rural Norwegian region where there have been sustained efforts to develop and integrate "local food" and rural tourism. Three research questions are investigated: to what extent is "local food" consumed by tourists? What factors affect tourists' consumption of local food? For tourists interested in local food, what purpose does the consumption of "local food" serve? We find that only a minority of rural tourism's tourists have a special interest in food. Nonetheless, for those who possess this interest, we find that local food plays an important role to their tourist experiences. Furthermore, the study suggests that local food is a means employed by parents to educate their children in the ways of "the rural idyll".

It was previously perceived as a citizen’s responsibility to follow the news and to keep oneself informed about politics and current affairs. Recently, however, it appears as though a growing number of citizens ignore the information opportunities given to them. Changes in the media environment have given people cross-nationally more of a choice regarding the media diet they prefer. For the American case, Prior has demonstrated that in an era of cable TV and Internet, people more readily remove themselves from political knowledge and political action than previously. In this article, we study how the public’s consumption of news versus entertainment has developed over the last decade in countries with significantly different media systems. Is there a general increase in preference for entertainment across Europe, and has the gap between news- and entertainment-seekers increased such as documented by Prior for the U.S. case? Who are the European citizens who remove themselves from news and current affairs in the environment of increased choice? Based on data from five waves of the European Social Survey covering more than thirty European countries from 2002 to 2010, we demonstrate how national context or the media environment moderates the influence of individual-level factors in news consumption.

The traditional way of organising agricultural production in Norway has been through family farming. A family farm is defined by the ownership of the farm through kinship over a number of generations. This article examines structural changes on Norwegian family farms based on the impact of increased competition and falling prices and subsidies. The strategy traditionally employed has been to increase total household income on the farm through working off-farm. We map changes in income allocation and work strategies on Norwegian family farms over time, changes in income allocation and work strategies among men and women on family farms over time and we show income allocation and work strategies among men and women as farmers and as farmers' spouses. Through a quantitative analysis of data on Norwegian farmers from 1987 until 2004, we show that there are continuing changes in work and income allocation on Norwegian farms. The trend is a higher dependence on off-farm income. However, this development is not only explained by more off-farm work by farmerswhich is an indication of lower value of farm work itself -but to a large degree this is a result of the increasing off-farm work of farm women. While at the same time more women are entering agriculture as farmers, we find clear evidence of differences in the organisation of farms operated by men and women. While male farmers are professionalising as 'one-man farmers,' female farmers to a larger degree depend (voluntarily or not) on their partner's assistance in the farm work.

No abstract