Interdisciplinarity and hegemonies in Gastronomy research: insights from a bibliometric mapping and identifying prominent research agendas

This article maps the scientific field of gastronomy through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 1,387 articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus between 1990 and 2024. By mobilizing quantitative indicators and network analysis, the study examines the evolution of publications, main journals, most productive and cited authors, international collaborations, and the co-occurrence of keywords. Results reveal a markedly interdisciplinary field whose intellectual structure is strongly shaped by tourism and hospitality, with the “food–tourism” binomial emerging as the dominant paradigm organizing themes and influencing core publication outlets and highly cited works. The analysis also reveals significant geospatial asymmetries, with a concentration of output and collaborations in Europe – particularly Spain – and comparatively lower visibility and citation impact in countries of the Global South, despite their growing productivity. These patterns suggest persistent hierarchies in the definition of research agendas and in the legitimation of what counts as central knowledge in gastronomy. The article argues that such hegemonies generate a structural paradox: while gastronomy consolidates as an autonomous scientific field, it remains epistemically dependent on adjacent areas, especially tourism. Empirically, the study offers an updated structural diagnosis of gastronomy research; theoretically, it advances debates on interdisciplinarity, scientific autonomy, and epistemic inequalities; and, methodologically, it illustrates the potential and limits of bibliometrics for emerging and fragmented fields. The findings support the need for broader, more plural research agendas that reposition gastronomy as a central analytical lens for health, sustainability, labour, public policy, and decolonial perspectives.