This collection of thoughtful and well-written essays grew out of a 2010 UNESCO/UNITWIN Network international congress on “Culture, Tourism and Development.” Co-editors Michael A. Di Giovine and Ronda A. Brulotte describe “edible identities” as the “strong socio-cultural impacts that are often subtle, viscerally experienced on individual levels, and subject to long-term processes of transformation” (21). They and their co-authors consider the impact of culinary and “heritage” tourism, the UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage programs and official lists, and the realities of economic transactions on a variety of communities and cultures’ foodways. At the same time, they are particularly interested in the ways in which the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of food is used to “create identity claims of ‘cultural heritage’ on local, regional, national and international scales” (2), and to see “how, as a foodstuff travels through a foodway, and an object is transformed into heritage, it is used to indicate, explicate and replicate important ideological claims on identity, ownership, sovereignty, and value” (3). Finally, and importantly, they focus on the communal and traditional nature of foodways practice even in the face of ongoing change and pressures of globalization (16).
Essays on cheese making (America and Northern Italy); cuisine (Italy, Mexico, France, Bolivia, Spain); terroir (Kyoto, Washington D.C.); chocolate (France); corn (Mexico); and bread (Germany) are rounded out by a thoughtful analysis of the diversity of African American foodways, an intriguing exploration of what seems to be essentially an urban legend about Slovenian salamander brandy, and a concluding treatise on food activism. All of these delineate both conscious and unconscious decisions as to what and who are “ethnic” and/or “local”; how “edible” identities are defined in connection to place, time, and people and why; and how economics, politics, access to resources, and belief impact and “mark” insiders and outsiders within groups (2).
The diversity of case studies which hone in on specific locales (Barcelona, Catalonia; Cagliari, Sardinia; Oaxaca de Juárez; Pietrelcina; Kyoto; New Orleans; Gullah Low Country); on specialized food processes (American artisan and Italian Bitto cheese making; preparing corn and making tortillas; French chocolate production; bread making; cicatelli pasta; caldo de piedra; and even the apparent hoax-process of making salamander brandy); and on the detailed and well-researched relationships of people to each other and place (African American multiple ethnicities and immigrants in Sardinia, among a number of examples) successfully achieves the authors’ goal of articulating food practice and its role in heritage more deeply than categories and labels. These localized examinations of the complicated interactions involved in the production, culinary processes, eating and, yes, consumerization of food provide new insights into the true complexity of examining and defining “food as cultural heritage.” While this volume avoids the perceived bias of the UNESCO World Heritage List towards Western models by drilling down into the narratives and practices within a variety of places and among a range of people, it also makes clear the need for additional research and documentation around the world.
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[Review length: 491 words • Review posted on March 18, 2015]