By Fabio Parasecoli, Agata Bachórz, and Mateusz Halawa
THE PIEROGI PROBLEM
Cosmopolitan Appetites and the Reinvention of Polish Food
The culinary landscape of Poland is significantly changing, reshaped by a new generation of food producers, chefs, and media personalities. The Pierogi Problem examines people’s networks, places, material culture, and media to explain how Polish tastemakers embrace context-specific strategies to localize discourses, practices, and values amid an increasingly globalized food culture. The decades following the end of Poland’s socialist regime were marked by a rising interest in foreign cuisines and Western forms of consumption. Today, however, ingredients, cooking techniques, and dishes that were once considered ordinary or part of the country’s uncomfortable past are being refashioned to reflect transformations in cultural hierarchies. The Pierogi Problem chronicles how and why local, traditional, and artisanal foods are reemerging for changing cosmopolitan appetites.
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Fabio Parasecoli
Fabio Parasecoli is Professor of Food Studies in the Nutrition and Food Studies Department at New York University. His scholarly work explores food, popular culture, and politics, particularly in food design. He studied East Asian cultures and political science in Rome, Naples and Beijing, and earned a PhD in Agricultural Sciences with a concentration in Gender and Nutrition from Hohenheim University, Germany. He frequently lectures at the Bologna Business School, the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra, Italy.
Photography by Duccio Battistrada
Other Books
GLOBAL BROOKLYN: DESIGNING FOOD EXPERIENCES IN WORLD CITIES
with Mateusz Halawa
(Bloomsbury, 2021)
What do the fashionable food hot spots of Cape Town, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv have in common? Despite all their differences, consumers in each major city are drawn to a similar atmosphere: rough wooden tables in postindustrial interiors lit by Edison bulbs. There, they enjoy single-origin coffee, kombucha, and artisanal bread.
This is ‘Global Brooklyn,’ a new transnational aesthetic regime of urban consumption. It may look shabby and improvised but it is all carefully designed. It may romance the analog, but is made to be Instagrammed. It often references the New York borough, but is shaped by many networked locations where consumers participate in the global circulation of styles, flavors, practices, and values
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PRACTICING FOOD STUDIES
(New York University Press, 2024)
Practicing Food Studies details the turn of the twenty-first century development and flourishing of food studies as a multidisciplinary field, focusing on its establishment at New York University. Food studies scholars have come from various fields such as history, sociology, economics, political science, nutrition, or public policy, but often felt limited by the conventions of their traditional discipline. Many gravitated to food studies to be able to describe and critically examine their specific areas of interest beyond the borders of academic disciplines. This volume explores the history of knowledge in which NYU Food Studies emerged, providing the opportunity to reflect on how academic fields are created and evolve as a response to institutional constraints and opportunities, the landscape of ideas, social movements, and public conversations.
GASTRONATIVISM
Food, Identity, Politics
(Columbia University Press, 2022)
Fabio Parasecoli identifies and defines the phenomenon of “gastronativism,” the ideological use of food to advance ideas about who belongs to a community and who does not. As globalization and neoliberalism have transformed food systems, people have responded by seeking to return to their roots. Many have embraced local ingredients and notions of cultural heritage, but this impulse can play into the hands of nationalist and xenophobic political projects. Such movements draw on the strong emotions connected with eating to stoke resentment and contempt for other people and cultures. Parasecoli emphasizes that gastronativism is a worldwide phenomenon, even as it often purports to oppose local aspects and consequences of globalization. He also explores how to channel pride in culinary traditions toward resisting transnational corporations, uplifting marginalized and oppressed groups, and assisting people left behind by globalization. Featuring a wide array of examples from all over the world, Gastronativism is a timely, incisive, and lively analysis of how and why food has become a powerful political tool.
Food is more than just a way to provide fuel to our bodies, especially in the consumer culture in which we are increasingly enmeshed.
– Fabio Parasecoli
Upcoming Events
SEPTEMBER 26, 2025
“Feast and Famine Series – Book Talk: The Pierogi Problem“
5:00 pm EST
411, Lafayette Street, 5th floor
NYC, USA
FREE event (in English)
Join Fabio Parasecoli, professor of Food Studies in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU Steinhardt, and Barbara Kirshemblatt-Gimblett,
The event is organized in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute New York
RSVP here
Contact Author
info@fabioparasecoli.com