Italy
Food and Identity
Food practices and their outcomes involve discourses that range from food as a marker of cultural identity to socially controversial issues such as economic globalization, local economic development and empowerment, and sustainability. This seminar is devoted to exploring the economic, political, social, and cultural significance of food from a number of disciplinary perspectives. We will start from the observation that food production and consumption significantly blend local and global dimensions, in a territorial, economic, as well as more generally cultural sense. Our discourse will be especially centered on (albeit not limited to) how “Italian” food, and the idea of the “Mediterranean diet”, while being profoundly localized, territorial, and culturally specific, have been translated into global cultural discourse and cultural capital, variously articulated in their regional variations as well as in their hybridizations, and how these articulations, in turn, impact the socioeconomic reality.
The seminar will be held in Naples, a large Mediterranean city in the south of the country where food has been for centuries an important signifier of cultural identity. The seminar will be hosted by the University of Naples “l’Orientale”, a higher education institution with a tradition of cross-cultural studies and a commitment to cooperation and sustainable development. The program will pair lectures on the seminar topics with co-curricular activities. Among the latter: visiting agricultural producers involved in projects of fair trade and solidarity-based food consumption; a cooking class; visiting wine producers in the region; visiting a pasta-maker in Gragnano.