Food Heritage

Over the past few decades, postindustrial societies in the Global North have seen a growing array of wines made from autochthonous grape varieties, traditional culinary customs, and heritage foods from all over the world acquire popularity— and greater market value. At the same time, mass manufacturing, industrialization, and production concentration—all expressions of modernization—still shape great parts of their contemporary food systems.
In the past few years, part of my research has focused on how the origin of a food or culinary custom can turn into a cultural, commercial, and marketing asset when it is directly connected, and on how food traditions become food heritage through interventions of public and private institutions, debates around cultural politics, and issues regarding cultural identity and social stratification.

In 2017 I published the book Knowing Where it Comes From: Labeling Traditional Foods to Compete in a Global Market (University of Iowa Press). The book aimed to bridge the research and the international debates among academic disciplines and professions that seldom engage with each other and, together with explorations of practices such as policy making, communication, and activism, to provide readers with a critical assessment of the complexities of the issues at hand. During my research, I analyzed academic studies, legal documents, activist websites, and media and marketing sources, with particular attention to the institutional arrangements, political compromises, and communication strategies that precede, accompany, and follow the establishment of place-based labels. I accessed information in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Chinese to explore specific issues and present relevant examples. I also drew from my own fieldwork—both as a scholar and a journalist—in the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Costa Rica, Brazil, Thailand, and India, and my previous research on sociopolitical and environmental issues connected with place-based labels. In the book I examined different models, from the legal ones based on intellectual property (both through trademark law and sui generis geographical indications) to Slow Food Presidia, the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list, and the burgeoning category of indigenous knowledge.

This research has led me to interact with various institutions. I have been part of a series of meetings and symposia about geographical organized by the World Food Law Institute at Howard University, Washington D.C, and the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). I have also participated in conversations at the State Deparment on those issues.

During my research in Poland, I have been contacted by and met with the offices of the Ministry of Agriculture that have been charged with developing the Canon of Polish cuisine.

Thanks to a Fulbright Specialist grant and with the support of my home institution, New York University, between June 10th and 22nd  2019 I will be working with Xavier Medina, UNESCO Chair on Food, Culture and Development at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), and with Gloria Rodriguez, a NYU alumna and herself a Fulbright scholarship recipient. We will be exploring approaches and processes that determined the creation of food heritage. Of course, we will be reflecting about food heritage itself, its nature, and its uses. In fact, different perceptions and approaches to food heritage have emerged around the world.

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