Food and Foodways in Italy from 1861 to the Present [Hardcover]

Despite being a universal experience, eating occures with remarkable variety across time and place: not only do we not eat the same things, but the related technologies, rituals, and even the timing are in constant flux. This lively and innovative history paints a fresco of the Italian nation by looking at its storied relationship to food.

1. The Luxury of the Aristocracy
2. Nature and Culture in the Peasant World
3. Eating in the City
4. Homemade Meals
5. The Great Transformation
6. Cuisine in the Age of Globalization
7. Eating in the Twenty-First Century

Emanuela Scarpellini is Professor of Modern History at the University of Milan, Italy. She has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University and Georgetown University, USA. She is the author of several books, including Material Nation: A Consumer's History of Modern Italy.

Scarpellini established herself as the leading historian of Italian consumer practices with her volume Material Nation. Now she has produced a superb social history of the Italian relationship with food and nutrition. Anyone who thinks Italian food culture has not changed much over time will learn much from this illuminating book. (Stephen Gundle, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK)

This is culinary history at its best. Its rich descriptions of Italian meals are evocative of place and time, sensitive to class, region, gender, and nation, and nestled within rich analysis of their meaningsymbolic, sociological, and historical. Informed by superlative research and deep reading of social theorists, the book is blessed as well with an inspired and at times lyrical translation. (Roger Horowitz, Director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley Museum and Library, USA)

Using sources that range from national accounts to demographic statistics to ls¢