What does the proliferation of food festival tell us about rural areas? How can these celebrations pave the way to a better future for the local communities? This book is addressing these questions contributing to the ongoing debate about the future of rural peripheries in Europe.
The volume is based on the ethnographic research conducted in Italy, a country internationally known for its food tradition and one of the European countries where the gap between rural and urban space is most pronounced. It offers an anthropological analysis of food festivals, exploring the transformational role they have to change and develop rural communities. Although the festivals aim mostly at tourism, they contribute in a wider way to the life of the rural communities, acting as devices through which a community redefines itself, reinforces its sociality, reshapes the perception and use of the surrounding environment. In so doing, thus, the books suggests to read the festivals not just as celebrations driven by food fashion, but rather fundamental grassroots instruments to contrast the effects of rural marginalization and pave the way to a possible better future for the community
Chapter 1: Introduction: Rural marginality and its development.- Chapter 2: Food festivals and the Italian foodscape.- Chapter 3: Food festivals as identity devices.- Chapter 4: Food festivals as political devices.- Chapter 5: Food festivals as economic devices.- Chapter 6: Conclusions: Food festivals as development devices.
Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, in Italy. His research focuses on themes of economic anthropology and, in particular, in issues concerning local development in Europe and Eastern Africa.
