Everyday Food Research Paper

Everyday food

Abstract

The article discusses the role of food as an instrument of identity and a channel of contact through cultures. This is discussed drawing from three cases of Italian food culture hybridization spanning from the early 20th century to the first decade of the 2000s: the role of Italian food in Italian-American identity as depicted in Leonardo Coviello’s work; the meeting of Southern and Northern food cultures following the Italian internal migrations in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the food practices of international migrants in the context of the global flows of people and commodities in present day Italy. In this regard, food plays an essential role in the rebuilding of a familiar context in which migrants can feel temporarily

A cultural system is as robust as it is open to the outside and engages in exchange, cross-reference, and hybridization. It is the fear of others that confines people within their habits, preventing their knowledge of diversity, and causing them to reject what is not customary.

Diet is one of the elements of social life most sensitive to changes in the surrounding context. Migration has always produced innovations and transformations in indigenous food traditions. Suffice it to consider the spread of tomatoes, potatoes, tea, and coffee in the dietary habits of Europeans to understand the transformations that have occurred through trade and the movement of people and things.

In what follows, three examples will be provided of changes in dietary habits in migratory contexts. The first example concerns the transformation of Italian emigrants to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second briefly discusses Italian immigration from the south to the north of the country after World War II. The third raises issues concerning the first and second generations of foreign immigrants into Italy in recent

Renowned for his diaries as well as his studies on education, Leonard Covello – Americanization changed his surname by removing the ‘i’ to make it easier to pronounce – ably recounted through the eyes of an Italian migrant child, cultural and social differences and the process of integration into the New World. Leonard attended a school established by a Protestant philanthropic association. The school was known as the ‘Soup School’ because at noon it provided a meal, which was one of the main reasons why it was chosen by immigrants for their children. The prime purpose of the school was the Americanization of new immigrants through the intensive teaching of English, hygiene, discipline, and love and respect for the new homeland.

In his autobiography, Leonardo Coviello describes how at the Soup School he first encountered the abundance of food in America; a highly significant experience for an immigrant of the late 1800s and early 1900s who came from extreme poverty and severe shortages of foodstuffs. The encounter with the school meals also meant an encounter with