Food Festivals and Local Development in Italy

A Viewpoint from Economic Anthropology

Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030533212
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Business

What does the proliferation of food festival tell us about rural areas? How can these celebrations pave the way to a better future for the local communities? This book is addressing these questions contributing to the ongoing debate about the future of rural peripheries in Europe.

The volume is based on the ethnographic research conducted in Italy, a country internationally known for its food tradition and one of the European countries where the gap between rural and urban space is most pronounced. It offers an anthropological analysis of food festivals, exploring the transformational role they have to change and develop rural communities. Although the festivals aim mostly at tourism, they contribute in a wider way to the life of the rural communities, acting as devices through which a community redefines itself, reinforces its sociality, reshapes the perception and use of the surrounding environment. In so doing, thus, the books suggests to read the festivals not just as celebrations driven by food fashion, but rather fundamental grassroots instruments to contrast the effects of rural marginalization and pave the way to a possible better future for the community

© The Author(s) 2020

M. F. FontefrancescoFood Festivals and Local Development in Italyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53321-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Tourism: Expectations and Local Initiatives

Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco¹

(1)

University of Gastronomic Sciences, Bra, Cuneo, Italy

End Abstract

The Meaning of Tourism

Sagre are one of the main touristic events in rural Italy; they are attractions able to mobilize about 1 billion euro and 1 million people every year (Pascale, 2019). Here, some initial questions arise: How do rural communities approach the tourism sector, and moreover, what role do sagre play in this expanding economic sector? These research questions are at the core of this chapter. In approaching them, the chapter follows the path laid by Clifford and Hildred Geertz, together with Lawrence Rosen (1979), in their analysis of Moroccan bazaars, asking what meanings and expectations communities associate with tourism. In doing so, the ethnographic spyglass looks at the ordinary affects (Stewart, 2007) that permeate the everyday life of a local community and its relationship with the particular form of economy that is tourism. Specifically, embracing tourism is not a linear process for a community (Chambers, 2020; Macleod & Carrier, 2010; Smith, 1989). Ethnographic research conducted in Italy points to the importance of the process of cultural negotiation the community has to undergo in order to develop into a touristic destination (Aime & Papotti, 2012; Grimaldi, 1996; Palumbo, 2006; Simonicca, 2004). This process encompasses a redefinition of the perception of the local space and its relationship with the outside world.

While a broad debate has interrogated the economic role of this industry for rural communities in the country (e.g. Berrino, 2011; Croce & Perri, 2015; Fortis, 2016; Gaggio, 2018), this chapter aims instead to investigate the process of cultural negotiation that surrounds the development of a tourist destination, looking to the community of San Giovanni in Monferrato, a rural village that, like the cities of Catalfaro and Ossina (Palumbo, 2006), has been recently been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The chapter investigates how, in the light of the nomination, the community envisions tourism and its role in its future. Moreover, like most rural communities in Italy (Bravo, 2013), San Giovanni faced a steep demographic and economic decline after World War II, failing to start a process of industrialization or tertiarization of its economy. In this respect, San Giovanni was an arbitrary location (Candea, 2007), and the ethnographic tale (Van Maanen, 1988) of its encounter with tourism explores how the community envisions this economy and tries to benefit from it.

Prospective of Tourism in San Giovanni

Monferrato is a wide hilly region that covers the south-eastern part of Piedmont, stretching from the Po River in the north to the Apennines mountains in the south. The Tanaro River cuts the region in two, dividing Monferrato into Basso Monferrato, on the left side of river, and Alto Monferrato, on the right. Basso Monferrato is also known as “Monferrato Casalese”, after the city of Casale Monferrato: it is the largest and richest centre in the region and, once it was the capital of the Marquisate of Monferrato, one of the pre-unitary states of the peninsula. Since the nineteenth century, Casale Monferrato has been an important industrial centre, primarily for the production of concrete. Its industrial history is linked to successful enterprises, such as Buzzi-UNICEM, one of the world’s largest firms for the production of cement, ready-mix concrete and construction aggregates, which has its headquarters in the city (Castronovo, 2007). The economic history of Casale Monferrato is also linked to the production of Eternit fibre cement, which was produced in the city until 1986, and resulted in over 1.800 deaths in the city and Province of Alessandria (Altopiedi, 2011).

Differently from the industrial development of Casale Monferrato, the economic history of Basso Monferrato is primarily based on agriculture, specifically wine and, more recently, hazelnut production (Fontefrancesco & Balduzzi, 2018). Throughout the twentieth century, the rural communities of the area experienced progressive depopulation and limited industrialization, and only marginally benefitted from the fast economic growth between the 1950s and the 1980s (Fontefrancesco, 2015): while many young people left the villages to find jobs in the manufacturing and services industries in nearby cities, those who stayed and invested locally profited from agriculture. Monferrato’s “restanza” (Teti, 2011), i.e. the sociocultural condition of those who had not abandoned their rural communities, was based on daily commuting and the development of the primary sector. Today, the specificities of the agricultural landscape appears to be the main attraction, along with artistic heritage, around which tourism could develop.

In 2014, a restricted pool of municipalities in Monferrato, among which San Giovanni, was recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO hereafter, as the 50th Italian heritage site (38th World Heritage Committee, 2014) (Photo 1.1). Despite the recognition, the tourism industry has only partially developed, and only recently (Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Alessandria & The European House Ambrosetti, 2010; Fondazione Gianfranco Pittatore & The European House Ambrosetti, 2011; The European House Ambrosetti, Fondazione Gianfranco Pittatore, & Alessandria, 2013). Thus, it appeared as a potential direction for local development for the communities, in particular those included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated closer to large urban centres, such as Turin, Milan and Genoa.

Photo 1.1

The landscape of Monferrato UNESCO core zone

(Credit Michele F. Fontefrancesco [2019])

San Giovanni is one of the municipalities of Basso Monferrato. It is a community of about 1000 inhabitants, half an hour’s drive from Casale Monferrato, Alessandria, the provincial capital, and Valenza, a small city internationally known for its jewellery industry (Fontefrancesco, 2016, 2018a). Nowadays, most of its active population commutes daily, and only about one hundred people are directly employed in agriculture. Until the 1950s, agriculture in San Giovanni, like in most of Italy (Bravo, 2013), employed over 60% of the active population. After World War II, young people started to leave San Giovanni, looking for jobs elsewhere, mostly in Genoa, Milan and Turin, which were, at the time, the main industrial cities in Italy. From 1951 to 1971, San Giovanni lost 30% of its population. Beginning in the 1960s, thanks to its proximity to the nearby towns of Alessandria, Casale and Valenza, a few manufacturing firms started opening in San Giovanni, employing over 100 people by the early 1980s. However, during the period of my research, none of those firms were still open. The last one was closed during the 2009 economic crisis that engulfed Italy and Europe for several years (Hewitt, 2013). Thus, today, the economy of San Giovanni rests mostly on agriculture, in particular wine making and hazelnut production.

“We tried to be factory workers, but we failed. We tried to open factories but what remains today of that promise of progress its just ruins and abandoned shelters,” Mario commented. “If we have a future, it is in the land, in its fruits and in the people that will like to visit it”.

Mario is a sixty-year-old viticulturist born and bred in San Giovanni. He left for over twenty years before coming back in the early 1990s to take over the family farm. In the last three decades, he has been committed to his now well-known winery, praised by food and wine associations for the quality of its products. He is a prominent person on the local scene, and for this reason, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Tourism: Expectations and Local Initiatives
• 2. The Anti-marginalization Device
• 3. The Socialization Device
• 4. The Reterritorialization Device
• 5. The Development Devices
• Back Matter