Human Chronotopes in Slow Food
In talking about “chronotopes,” which is a term borrowed from Mikhail Bakhtin (1981), Cavanaugh and Singh (2014) refer to “links created across events that occur in different places at different times” (Cavanaugh and Singh 2014, 52). One of the examples given is how Italian pig farmers use concepts such as terra, territorio, origini, tradizioni, il passato, autentico, genuine, and tipico to connect characteristics of their present-day salami products with those made in the same region, using similar traditions in the past. They use such chronotopes to pitch a case for authenticity.
This reminded me of how Slow Food uses similar chronotopes to pitch the products made by farmers who have Slow Food certification. Once a farm is recognized as a Slow Food Presidium, they are considered to produce “heritage items at risk of extinction.” Interesting to note is that while territorio, and tradizioni play a part in the determination of how authentic a food item is, the identity of the farmer is not an important factor. This could be because the flow and flux of the farmers cannot be controlled by Slow Food. Rural Italy has experienced many vacuums since industrialization and it is often local and international immigrants who are increasingly reviving farms and heritage food items. Heritage would not survive if a human identity chronotope were to be introduced…
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: The University of Texas Press.
Cavanaugh, J and S, Shankar. 2014. Producing Authenticity in Global Capitalism: Language, Materiality, and Value: American Anthropologist 116 (1): 51-64
Contributed by KumeriBandara on 10/02/2020
