Food Festivals and Local Development in Italy

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 justas 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.
Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, in Italy. His research focuses on themes of economic anthropology and, in particular, in issues concerning local development in Europe and Eastern Africa.