In Italian domestic life, it is quite common to conserve tomatoes for the winter. This essay explores how this practice configures a generalized reciprocity and a type of ritual with familiar entrainment and social initiation. The home-made tomato jars are exchanged as gifts and are part of a generalized reciprocity between family and friends. This custom highlights many hidden meanings for food and its capacity to integrate the social interactions into a “solidarity context”. Following the interpretative methodology proposed by Antonio Gramsci, this folkloric practice can be viewed as a shift from a peasant society to an industrial society. This folkloric practice is extensive and submerged, and consolidates the meanings of the "Intangible Heritage" into an artificial society where the popular expressions of the cultural transitions are entrusted mostly to public folklore. So, a focus on this special food-lore implies a rethink of the official concept of "typical food": since by official and typical food, we mean a political use of tradition, the goal of which is the ethno-business. Conversely, in the unconscious meaning of the making and exchanging of the tomato jars, the economy is intimate and unofficial, in short it is "socially integrated".

Tomato Sauce for the Winter: Symmetrical Exchange, Familiar Entrainment and Social Initiation into Italian Domestic Life

Lia Giancristofaro
Primo
2018-01-01

Abstract

In Italian domestic life, it is quite common to conserve tomatoes for the winter. This essay explores how this practice configures a generalized reciprocity and a type of ritual with familiar entrainment and social initiation. The home-made tomato jars are exchanged as gifts and are part of a generalized reciprocity between family and friends. This custom highlights many hidden meanings for food and its capacity to integrate the social interactions into a “solidarity context”. Following the interpretative methodology proposed by Antonio Gramsci, this folkloric practice can be viewed as a shift from a peasant society to an industrial society. This folkloric practice is extensive and submerged, and consolidates the meanings of the "Intangible Heritage" into an artificial society where the popular expressions of the cultural transitions are entrusted mostly to public folklore. So, a focus on this special food-lore implies a rethink of the official concept of "typical food": since by official and typical food, we mean a political use of tradition, the goal of which is the ethno-business. Conversely, in the unconscious meaning of the making and exchanging of the tomato jars, the economy is intimate and unofficial, in short it is "socially integrated".
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11564/699803
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