In his book The Italians, John Hopper writes a few perceptive pages on Italians and food. He concedes that cuisine is for Italian what the weather is for Britons, âa suitable topic for conversation between strangers that avoids the risks associated with politics, religion and footballâ (Hopper 2016, 93). At the same time, food allows for quite acerbic discussions on specific ingredients and precise methods of cooking. La tavola is important for Italians:
The role of the table in Italian life is relentlessly emphasized in advertising of all kinds and even reflected in the grammar of the language. Il tavolo is the word for the physical object, whereas la tavola , the same word but in the feminine, is untranslatable into English. Its connotations encompass the meal and its preparation, quality and consumption, and â most importantly â the enjoyment of it (âŠ) When, for example, Italians want to describe the joys of good eating and drinking, they talk of âi piaceri della tavolaâ. (ibidem, 94)
Food is perceived as probably the most distinctive aspect of Italian identity both in Italy and abroad. Food culture is central both to the way Italians mark their national identity and to the consolidation of Italianicity in a global context. The association is so tight that already Roland Barthes (1977, 48) in the âRhetoric of the Imageâ used a brand of pasta, Panzani, to illustrate how âItalianicityâ, âthe condensed essence of everything that could be Italianâ works in a mythological fashion building imagined but powerful reference points for practice. However, gastronomic identity, just like other aspects of identity, is a continuous construction that consolidates through practice across history and geography rather than an essence to be discovered in a purified moment of origin, a well-delimited site, a single product or recipe. Creolization and hybridization are indeed a feature of any cuisine. This is particularly the case for Italian cuisine, exposed as it has been to a variety of influencesâso, for example, tomatoes arrive from America, but tomato sauce for pasta was not indigenous in Pre-colombian civilizations, and in Italy it was the most distinctive use they were put.
The Italian food system has significantly changed in the last decades. With a marked internationalization of the food market, the diffusion of supermarkets, increased urbanization and the participation of women in the paid labour force. Italy has perhaps been slow to recognize the strength of its food sector, but things have changed rapidly in recent years. In Parma, Cibus, the international food fair in the segments of excellence including typical products, specialties and haute cuisine, has been held for nearly two decades. Parma was also selected for the headquarters of the European Food Safety Authority. In Turin, Terra Madre has been held for over a decade, promoted by Slowfood, an eco-gastronomic association that has long crossed national borders as the most visible alternative to the development of a fast food culture (Sassatelli and Davolio 2010). In Bologna, FICO Eataly Food Park has recently opened: organized around Italian gastronomy, it is the largest food park in the World (Mosconi 2018). These initiatives are only the tip of an iceberg of an economic and cultural sector which is gaining a strong awareness of itself. The Italian gastronomic sector is also among the most dynamic in economic and social terms, with relatively high annual growth rates, a strong openness to migrant entrepreneurship, a flourishing of new and different places of consumption, a real boom of gastronomic publishing, and, last but not least, a flourishing of a myriad of local association and of educational or promotional initiativesâfrom local fairs to tasting courses.
Cuisine and foodways are obviously not just a matter of sustenance, food being deeply intertwined with culture, as an utmost site of contamination and exchange, where social identities are constructed and realized, celebrated and challenged. Culinary competence is both a taken for granted knowledge deeply rooted in everyday practice and a battleground for the consolidation of discourses and practices of identity building. Food, in the words of Arjun Appadurai (1981, 3), is an âextremely rich social factâ, a âparticularly plastic form of collective representationâ. The social sciences have long shown that food, food choices and food practices are social, they help stabilize collective and personal identity (Bell and Valentine 1997; Counihan and Van Esterik 1987; Fischler 1988; Goody 1982; Lupton 1996; Mintz 1996; Mintz and Dubois 2002; Morgan et al. 2006; Watson and Caldwell 2005; Wilk 2006). Food has fostered processes of identity building, whether national, regional , or âethnicâ, in social contexts defined by diverse traditions and migrations (Belasco and Scranton 2002; Cook and Crang 1996; Gabaccia 1998). Food is a potent identifier, and certainly it is profoundly implicated in the cultural representation of Italy both in Italy and abroad (Naccarato et al. 2017). The Italian ways of food are often represented through the lenses of nostalgia for a rustic peasant tradition articulated as a bucolic fantasy (Dickie 2007; Montanari 2013; Parasecoli 2017). While the history of Italians and food has also been one of scarcity and hunger for many peasants who were forced to emigrate (Cinotto 2013; Helstosky 2005), such idyllic representation has certainly contributed to the myth of Italian cuisine today. Italian culture was furthermore associated with La dolce vita in the years after the Second World War during the Italian economic boom. Thus, relatively recently, a new appreciation of Italian food as high quality and gratifying gradually matured, supported also by an association with health sustained by the âinventionâ of the Mediterranean diet in the 1970s (Moro 2014).
Beyond such associations, it might seem odd to ponder about Italians and food in the globalized world of today. Never before have we enjoyed access to such varied and plentiful food as in the global West. Food has been delocalized, disentangled from its local territory and climatic limitations (Poulain 2017). Italy is no exception. Products such as avocados and kiwi which were almost unknown forty years ago are now part of everyday diet. And in large supermarkets you may find cherries and green beans all year round. Still, while global chains and franchised outlets which have helped spread global brands everywhere have been touted as McDonaldization (Ritzer 1993) or the triumph of ânon-placesâ AugĂ© (1995), we are now aware that the world has not become a globalized, de-humanized theme park. Even fast food chains have adapted to the cultural diversity of local contexts. In Italy, McDonaldâs itself is at the same time both a cultural icon and a target of criticism. And it exists side by side traditional trattorias, osterias and cafes. Indeed, Italy, whose economic development came later than in other Western countries, well exemplifies the two directions of development in the contemporary retail sector which both diverge and reinforce one another: on the one hand the spread of outlets and discount stores emphasizing price and standardization, on the other specialty shops and niche chains as well as farmer markets and alternative food networks with a renewed emphasis on quality, difference and local traditions .
Italian cuisine is intimately local, or better, related to the many cities which punctuate the peninsula, and their territories. The relatively recent practice of representing Italian cuisine as regionalized along administrative divides has given way to the fortunate canon about Italian regional cuisine. Still, in their seminal cultural history of Italian cuisine Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari (2003, xvi) note that historically âItalyâs culinary heritage is usually asserted and recognized through references to city-based identitiesâ. The centrality of the city is the backbone of John Dickieâs book on Italian foodways as well, on the premise that:
Italy has the richest tradition of urban living on the planet and the enviable way in which Italians eat is part of that tradition. It is no coincidence that so many Italian products and dishes are named after cities: bistecca alla Fiorentina, prosciutto di Parma, saltimbocca alla romana, pizza napoletana, risotto alla milanese, pesto genovese, pesto trapanese, olive ascolane, mostarda di Cremona ⊠For centuries, Italyâs cities have been where all the things that go to create great cooking are concentrated: ingredients and culinary expertise, of course but also power, wealth, markets and competition for social prestige. (2007, 7)
As documented by Capatti and Montanari (2003), the Italian culinary tradition spans back to the Middle-ages through a dense networking of cities and their culture. The unity of the Italian alimentary model is thus made up of localities, cities and their provinces, in a âhorizontalâ and âverticalâ dynamic which includes the exchanges between rich and poor, urban and peasant culinary traditions, and sustains processes of identity recognition and resource organization. As early as the thirteen and fourteen century, certain local products, such as the Parmigiano cheese, reached distant places and became a prestigious condiment for pasta all along the peninsula. Yet the local varieties of pasta shapes, ...