Regionalism and Nationalism in Migrant Marketplaces: Transnational Social Geographies and the Globalization of Italian Food

摘要

Transatlantic Italian foods offer a paradigmatic commercial and cultural product of a migrant marketplace in which waves of mobile cooks and eaters from used food as a material and symbolic component of their identity as Italians in America, while also shaping notions of Italian food and the Italian nation. This paper advances the migrant marketplace framework by showing how notions of culinary regionalism and nationalism were constructed through the transatlantic circulation of culinary and culturalimaginaries. Combining commodity chain analysis and ethnic studies methodologies reveals a long-term synchronization of taste between Italy and America and across social and regional lines in Italy. By the mid-twentieth century, the American food industry had standardized diverse Italian regional cuisines into an image of red sauce and pizza, but in the 1970s, a new generation of mobile Italians and Italian Americans recovered those regional traditions and raised the global status of Italian food.