A Food Festival as a Site of Research Restitution: Reflections on Relationality and Legitimation

This chapter examines power dynamics and relationality in field research conducted by a group of women researchers involved in a project on foodways in the Moroccan region of Souss Massa. Foodways are understood as traditional and ritual food-related practices encompassing production, preparation, sharing, and consumption in everyday and festive contexts. The research is based on participant observation and visual methods carried out during a fish festival in the “micro-village” of Sidi Bounouar, a Slow Fish presidium for wakkad mussels, hand-harvested and traditionally smoked outdoors. The paper explores the challenges and opportunities of qualitative research within a triangulated field involving local community groups, particularly women’s and fishers’ associations, local institutional representatives and foreign Slow Food delegates supporting sustainable food economies and local tourism potential, and the researchers themselves, engaged in feminist, solidarity-based research aimed at decolonizing academia. Through a reflexive approach, the paper deconstructs fieldwork power dynamics and processes of legitimation that can enable reciprocity while also producing misunderstandings or unexpected interactions.