Food Festivals and Expectations of Local Development in Northern Italy

This essay offers an ethnographic analysis of the role of food in modern Italian food festivals. Starting from the ethnographic case of Borgonovo, a rural town in Southern Piedmont, and its festival, it highlights the nonlinear role played by food in the festivals and points out gastronomic festivals should be read as a local response of rural, and marginal communities to the phenomenon of their social marginalization.