No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Cultural Heritage in Food Activism: Local and Global Tensions
... And by means of which procedures? A first approach, supported by a growing movement of activists and scholars (e.g., Trubek, 2008;Paxson, 2010), champions that these identities are expressions of ideologies: political, ethical, and aesthetic stances that are rooted in local communities and that are part of their unique cultural heritage (Counihan, 2014). Hence, food identities should be negotiated by the insiders who can decide how to lay down and possibly relocate them, e.g., by means of deliberative process (see Feghali et al., 2022 for the application of a deliberative model to Lebanese fermented products; see Ankeny, 2016 for an overview of deliberative models and food). ...
... The Global North Food Sovereignty Movement leans strongly towards 'the local' and often excludes 'the Other'. Perhaps unintentionally, the extreme food localism erases immigrants' and diaspora's contributions to food systems (Counihan, 2016). Yet, how can we think of potatoes, beans, tomatoes, etc., without considering the violent transfer of those foods and other colonial crops (and the water, soil, labour, and knowledge embodied in it) from Africa, Latin America, and Asia? ...
... The Global North Food Sovereignty Movement leans strongly towards 'the local' and often excludes 'the Other'. Perhaps unintentionally, the extreme food localism erases immigrants' and diaspora's contributions to food systems (Counihan, 2016). Yet, how can we think of potatoes, beans, tomatoes, etc., without considering the violent transfer of those foods and other colonial crops (and the water, soil, labour, and knowledge embodied in it) from Africa, Latin America, and Asia? ...
When activists and academics think and implement the agroecological transition, attention shall be paid to re-thinking and re-defining the intellectual, distributive and historical premises behind the past, present and future food systems. Rather than being static and politically neutral, food systems are socio-ecological networks that are in continuous transformation and where interactions are defined by the activities of people and the planet as much as by the ideas that legitimize certain behaviours. In the specific case of the European conventional food systems – that includes both continental Europe and the United Kingdom - today’s picture is the outcome of a series of enclosures and appropriation of lives and nature underpinned by notions of patriarchy, colonialism and that food – like any other object – shall be considered as a commodity whose production and consumption are ruled by the encounter of demand and offer and that is only valued for its market price (exchange value). In this chapter, five research-activists joined together to discuss concrete examples that show that the agroecological transition could be strengthened by the adoption of a political understanding of commons and commoning as intersectional antidotes for a just agroecological transition that rejects the colonial, patriarchal, unjust and anti-ecological premises of the mainstream food systems. Through a combination of theory and practice, history and imagination, empowerment and de-commodification, the chapter brings to the forefront those dimensions of food that cannot be monetised and valued in market terms, showing that political, imaginative and organisational power of commons and commoning can bridge the urban-rural divide, and contribute to the convergence of various movements, including agroecological urbanism and food sovereignty
... As for many Italian food activists (Counihan 2014), for Cossu love of good food was an important motivation to and strategy of action: "Taste is central. . . . I grew up here [in Sardinia], hence I am used to certain tastes, strong tastes that are characteristic of here, so when I travel to another region or another country, I suffer. ...
This article examines the discourses and concepts of regional Istrian gourmet heroes, who bring into being and distribute ideas on what " authentic " Istrian cuisine is. Citizens of three different countries who speak four different languages, these experts consider themselves most of all Istrian and similarly characterize Istrian foods as alternative foods in contrast to mainstream agro-industrial varieties. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this essay focuses on how these experts arbitrarily use adjectives such as " authentic, " " traditional, " " natural " and others in overlapping ways which I will show create obstacles to labelling the precise terminology of each. Ultimately I argue that these descriptors are all interchangeable in the experts' discourse(s) on Istrian food, furthermore denoting Istrian food itself, although most of the time they absolutely do not mean the same. This mishmash is nowadays one of the main elements unifying the Istrian region as such, and while similarly present in many different places, Istria's food movement is unique, because of its geographical and historical contexts.
Rapporti di produzione e cultura subalterna: Contadini in Sardegna
- G Angioni