Berkley Center

What do French gastronomy and French law have in common? From my experience of living in Lyon, I’ve observed that the two are linked in three important ways:

1. they receive equal time and attention in my “Political and administrative institutions” class;

2. according to the professor of this class, French gastronomy and French law are the French people’s two favorite things in the world; and

3. each is strongly connected to the French concept of terroir, the idea of being fundamentally rooted in the land.

In terms of gastronomy, it might be a little more straightforward to understand how food is connected to a particular area of land. For example, whereas Americans use the term “champagne” as a catch-all for everyone’s favorite bubbly, “champagne” in France signifies that your drink comes from the vineyards in the region of Champagne—hailing from Champagne’s soil, climate, topography. Lyon, France’s capital of gastronomy, has its own strong culinary traditions that are rooted in terroir. Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) is lined with bouchons that offer restaurant-goers hearty Lyonnais specialties. These bouchons were started by female cooks, the “mothers of Lyon,” who served the working class dishes such as cervelles de canut (a cheesy mix) and quenelles (a dumpling-like dish submerged in cream sauce) starting as early as the eighteenth century. These dishes are inherently local: cervelles de canut translates to “silk workers’ brains,” a reflection of the low opinion the upper classes had for the lower-class silk workers in the city; the fish used for the quenelles are fresh from the lakes nearby. Of course, these Lyonnais dishes are paired with Beaujolais, the wine from the region.

How, then, does law connect to land? The answer lies in the very territorial division of France via its department structure. Since the French Revolution in 1789, France has been divided into a number of departments, the boundaries of which are defined by the distance it would take a horse to cross in one day. The prefecture system was designed during this same revolutionary period to interact with the department system. Each department has a prefet, a politically neutral representative of the state to apply the laws. At the time of the Revolution and the reign of Napoleon at the turn of the nineteenth century, the prefet was a “man from Paris” who would live in the area to ensure its stability. The post continues to this day as a highly prestigious governmental placement despite its high turnover rate. Prefets usually only serve for one to two years as they are required to live at the prefecture in their department, go to Paris once a month, and relinquish the right to quit without permission.

While this tradition of terroir is undoubtedly a true French institution in itself, how does a country whose departments are measured by the “horse rule” operate in a globalized/globalizing world? This tension inhabits many areas of political discourse, from the question of GMOs in agriculture to proposed changes to the beloved department system. In fact, France’s institutional structure is undecided at the moment, and looming territorial reform that focuses on metropoles could render the department system obsolete.

During a vacation in April, I had the chance to take a four day bike trip through the Loire Valley. Biking along the new trail that links châteaux and tiny towns along the Loire River, I was struck by the intentionality of the trail designers to take cyclists through each village, field, and vineyard along the way. In the face of structural changes and challenges to the idea of terroir, perhaps France is taking smaller cultural steps to preserve this concept, in addition to engaging in larger political debates.