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  • The Italian Way: Food and Social Life
  • Serena Volpi
The Italian Way: Food and Social Life. By Douglas Harper and Patrizia Faccioli . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 311 pp. Hardbound, $29.00.

For an Italian reader, the analysis of The Italian Way can be a revealing experience. The study, conducted by Douglas Harper, an American visual sociologist at Duquesne University, and guided by his colleague of the University of Bologna, Patrizia Faccioli, is an interesting examination of the meaning of food in Italian culture, focusing on the culinary tradition of the city of Bologna and its surrounding area. The book's main strong point is the keen observation of "normal" everyday activities linked to food preparation and its consumption. I am from Milan, a couple of hours drive north of Bologna, but I found myself smiling in recognition of the food habits and beliefs present in my own family and in those observed by Harper in the nearly twenty-five Bolognese families he chose as his sample. Nonetheless, this study can be appreciated not only by Italian readers but also by people interested in different fields of the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies. In fact, in their research, Harper and Faccioli consider food as "a center through which concentric circles of cultural meaning are organized" (14). They understand food, therefore, as a material culture product through which it is possible to observe the "interplay between structure and improvisation" (14). This approach echoes the opinion of John Foot, a British scholar of Italian history, when he states: "It is in the complicated nexus between tradition and innovation where the originality of Italy is perhaps best understood" (Modern Italy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). According to Harper, structure and improvisation are two fundamental aspects of Italian culture, which he decides to analyze through an approach based on Saussurian structuralism. The chosen method relies mainly on informal interviewing followed by an open-ended questionnaire adjusted to the different interviewees.

The study begins with a discussion of Italian regional and national identities in order to understand differences and similarities traceable in the culinary recipes from throughout Italy. It then proceeds, giving an excursus on Italian history (from ancient Rome to Fascism, World War II, and beyond to the period of industrialization and the economic boom) framed by the categories of scarcity and plenty, sacred and profane, as both linked concepts are present in the country history and in the idea of food preparation Italians have developed during the centuries. After providing the reader with such valuable frames of reference, the book is divided into two main sections. The first part focuses on the themes of "love, power, and labor" (25) and how they affect the preparation of meals in relation to the position of women in Italian families and society. In [End Page 284] fact, "In Italy, food is a means through which to express affection" (italics in original, 69) and a way of exercising a kind of power which Italian women seem reluctant to abandon. Consequently, the research focus shifts to understanding "how food influences the identity of the modern Italian woman" (97) considering what the sociologist Laura Balbo, in 1978, described as la doppia presenza (the double presence) of Italian women in families and in the labor market in the context of the special features of the history of feminist studies in Italy.

They devote the second section to the ways in which Italian food is made and how structure and improvisation work simultaneously in the relationship of Italian people with food, its preparation, and the social life connected to it. I found myself wondering why I never questioned the sequence of courses (il primo, il secondo, . . .) or why Italians never drink cappuccino after their meals. I likewise never thought about how strange this may seem from an "outsider's" perspective, the almost omnipresent preoccupation with digestion that Harper traces back to the second century A.D. and, more precisely, to the philosopher Galen's rules for healthy eating and living (193-94). In this section, the oral material is prevalent as interviews are essential in order to prove the validity of the cultural chart Harper has created...

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