New ways of gazing: The refractive gaze

This paper proposes a new gaze: the refractive gaze. To provide a contextual framework for it, this paper explores Foucault's (1963) physicians gaze; Urry's (1999) tourist gaze; Maoz's (2006) mutual gaze and Bell's (2005) prescriptive and nervous gazes. We introduce the refractive gaze by examining how tourist-gastronomes negotiate food risk and how this fuels their culinary and cultural capital. The refractive gaze incorporates the subjectively experienced cognitive and sensuous elements that tourist-gastronomes encounter in their quest for 'out of the ordinary' food experiences. Our research is based on secondary case sources that illuminate the articulated theory; in particular, the work of Bell (2010) - who noted how tourist-gastronomes negotiate horse milk consumption in rural Mongolia - which emphasised the internal thought processes followed in deciding to override a fear/risk nexus in order to gain the bragging rights of cultural and culinary capital. Interpretation of Bell's (2010) case material indicates the refractive gaze has potentially broad generalisability vis-à-vis academic understanding of touristic food experience, as well as in areas beyond this domain.