Review Italians and Food by Roberta Sassatelli

Sociologia Ruralis, 2002

Nutritional anthropologists recognise that people eat specific foods for a variety of reasons -to remember the tastes of their childhood, pursue status in the eyes of their peers, improve health, perform cultural rituals, for personal and social transformation, and to demonstrate community through commensality. Particular foods are often chosen in an effort to perform culturallydefined identities of health and morality, and food-use change is an element in rituals of bodyself transformation, whether personal, in individual diets and health regimes, or social, found in age and status-related rites of passage. New foods are chosen for variety and adventure; culinary tourism occurs in part because travellers desire new tastes and food experiences. Indeed, just as tourists travel in order to see the sights, learn new skills, and transform themselves educationally, so do they use travel to seek out and adopt new food habits in order to affect dietary transformation.

Slow Tourism: Experiences and Mobilities

Culture of the Slow, 2013

Colección Estudios del Hombre, 38. Serie Antropología de la Alimentación, 2018

Food and particularly gastronomy have always had a significant presence in the tourist experience. A third of tourist travel income originates from food expenditure. In this sense, considering the experiences of travellers and taking into account the lived dimensions of tourism becomes essential for a deeper understanding of the tourism phenomenon which comes more and more to be regarded as an arena of interaction played out through the tourist’s encounters and engagements with spaces, places and cultures of travelled destinations. Gastronomic tourism appears to be a growing sector within the overall tourism market. Nevertheless, the link between gastronomy and tourism has been one of the least studied aspects so far, and it has tradi- tionally had a very secondary place to professionals from both areas. Even from academic perspectives on tourism, when approaching gastronomy as a subject, tourism studies have generally left out the cultural and social aspects of this important economic and commercial issue. And we can say almost the same thing from the food and gastronomy fields. Even today, the relationship between tourism and gastronomy remains peripheral. On the other hand, cultural tourism is tourism, and it is far more than production and consumption of high art and heritage. Thus, gastronomic tourism must be understood as an integral part of cultural tourism. Food (including gastronomy) is an important part of Culture, and from this perspective, it is also of interest as a tourist resource. In this sense, it is necessary to promote the study of the link be- tween food, gastronomy and tourism from the point of view of social and cultural disciplines. This book intends to carry out an interdisciplinary reflection exactly in these terms. Food, Gastronomy and Tourism. Social and Cultural Perspectives / F. Xavier Medina, Jordi Tresserras, Editors. -- Guadalajara, Jalisco : Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades ; Centro Universitario de los Lagos, Universidad de Guadalajara, 2018. 151 p., (Colección Estudios del Hombre. Serie Antropología de la Alimentación ; 38)

The Translator, 2015

Through an examination of British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's cookery TV series Jamie's Great Italian Escape (Channel 4, 2005), and comparing the original version to the Italian subtitled version of the show the present paper sets out to investigate a case of cultural translation in which Italian cuisine is adapted for a UK TV audience and then retranslated for the Italian audience whose dishes were originally the source of inspiration for the programme. To provide control parameters, the paper also considers a few key passages from the original cookbook accompanying the TV series and contrasts them to the Italian translation. The present contribution will address in particular the topic of how culture-specific contents of the Italian culinary tradition are adapted for UK audiences and readership and how they are then conveyed back via subtitles and written translation to the Italian speaking viewers/readers, who do not share the cultural and the linguistic background of the source text recipients, yet are very familiar with the cultural contents presented in the show. The paper argues that power structures between a centre and a periphery of the media industry are relevant for the success and reception of cookery programmes and of their translations. As Italian food culture is presented to the world via a UK perspective, one further line of argument of the paper is that this might influence how Italian culinary tradition is perceived by the rest of the world. The paper argues that unveiling the power dynamics involved in what is usually considered material for Television Studies or Cultural Studies may have important implications for Translation Studies as well.

Italians and Food, 2019

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. 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 influences throughout its history. This introduction illustrate the rationale for putting toghether a collection on Italians and food and sets the major coordinates for the study of italianicity at the table.

2011

In recent decades, Italian cuisine has had a greater impact upon the development of eating habits than any other national cuisine. Spaghetti, pizza, tiramisù und espresso are ubiquitous in Europe and North America. This article reconstructs the reception of Italian cuisine in Europe, identifying and separating the complex tangle of factors that contributed to it. These included the image of Italy in art and literature, the movements of tourists and migrants, the rolewhich for a long time has generally been ignored-of the Italian state in promoting foreign trade and the economy, and the impact of epidemiology.

Consumption Markets & Culture, 2005

In Levi-Straussian terms cooking marks the "transition between nature and culture". Yet the study of cookbooks as placed cultural artefacts is largely neglected by consumer researchers. This essay seeks to address this oversight, setting out to explore the potential contribution of a turn to cookbooks for enriching our understanding of the character of contemporary consumer culture. It weaves a line of argument that asserts the value of treating cookbooks as cultural products, as objectifications of culinary culture, as constructed social forms which are amenable to textual analysis. In this respect it declares that, rather than simply being understood as reflections of contemporary consumer culture, cookbooks should be understood as artefacts of cultural life in the making. That is, cookbooks contain not only recipes but inscribed cultural tales which can be understood as productive of the culinary culture that they pretend only to display, and performative in their attempt to do things with us. We reveal cookbooks to be sites of aestheticised consumption.