Untitled

architectural heritage. The government has gone
to great pains to document and protect many of
these resources, with a system of wildlife refuges,
national parks and UN Biosphere Reserves. The
challenge facing Cuba is how to move beyond its
image as a low-priced Caribbean beach destination
and make greater use of its rich and unique
resources in a sustainable and appropriate manner
that will meet the future needs of the Cuban
people.
Further reading
Simon, F.L. �1995) `Tourism development in
transitional economies: the Cuban case', The
Columbia Journal of World Business 30�1): 26±40.
cuisine
SIMON MILNE, NEW ZEALAND
GORDON EWING, CANADA
Cuisine can refer to a style of cooking, the manner
of food preparation or the food prepared. The
word, originally from French, refers to all of the
above meanings but has the additional implication
of a kitchen or place of food preparation.
Cuisine has been a major preoccupation of
many civilisations and became highly developed
over the millennia. China, and later Italy and
France, are widely cited as having developed
cuisine to its most sophisticated artistic levels
through the mid-twentieth century. While other
societies placed significant emphasis on the advancement
of their indigenous cuisines, none have
received the international recognition bestowed
upon these three ethnic culinary movements. Some
scholars argue that culinary customs often change
between very close neighbouring regions and that
the term cuisine should not be applied to vast
geographic areas characterised by diverse consumption
habits. Hence, they contend that while
Shantung, Kweichow and Nanking each have
distinctive cuisines, they are heterogeneous as a
group and should not be referred to as Chinese
cuisine. Various ethnic cuisines form a major
attraction as tourists are often interested in
cultural varieties in food, and cuisine can thus be
used in promotion �see also promotion, place).
Some areas of the world, like France and Thailand,
are popular destinations also because of their
cuisine.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the term `haute cuisine'
�literally, high cooking) was widely used throughout
the Western world in reference to the elaborate and
artful French cooking developed and practised
during this period. Forty years later, the term
`nouvelle cuisine' �new cooking) was applied to
describe the most significant turn in French
culinary history. While nouvelle cuisine shocked
and excited the culinary world in its most radical
movement, it was also short-lived. By the early
1980s the great chefs had returned to a more
conservative practice, influenced, however, by their
daring experiment.
The French experience with nouvelle cuisine
had a global ripple effect, spawning new cuisines
from Hungary to Australia. In France there were
also offshoots in `cuisine minceur' �fine cooking),
`cuisine naturelle' �natural cooking) and `cuisine de
marcheÂ' �market cookery), all created by famous
chefs. However, most gastronomes �see gastronomy)
and scholars agree that, while there has not
been a single, unified culinary movement of the
nouvelle cuisine magnitude since its demise, the
culinary arts of the 1990s have greatly benefited
from the creativity and innovation resulting from it.
Haute cuisine also features as an attraction in
tourism in the form of culinary or `wine and dine'
trips and a good culinary reputation of a region or
a city may have significant importance in
destination choice.
cultural conservation
cultural conservation 123
MICHAEL NOWLISS, FRANCE
Culture is a word that has rather different meaning
in philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism, anthropology,
sociology and elsewhere. Indeed, Raymond
Williams considers it to be one of the most
complicated words in the English language because
of its diverse usages in distinct systems of thought
�1983: 87). To Kroeber and Kluckhohn, the culture
of a people comprises their patterns of behaviour,
and their particular achievements inclusive of their