Food and Relatedness From Past to Present in the Arbëreshë Community of Molise. The Evolving Power of Food Gifts as Binding Agents After 1960s Industrialization

Abstract

This article investigates how the changing value of food due to the transition from famine to abundance after industrialization in the 1960s generated a shift in sociality and ways of being together in the Arbëreshë community, who immigrated to Molise during the sixteenth century. The fact that food remains a means of reaffirming and strengthening relationships during key rites of passage, such as marriage and death, can be considered representative of the power of eating—especially commensality and the gift of food—to create relatedness. However, the attraction of notions of “typical” and “local” food leads the community to package and stage “authentic” culinary festivals in an attempt to build touristic relationships. Focusing on why visitors attend such festivals, together with who they are, this article investigates the actors of returning tourism and the existential authenticity they seek from and among themselves. This study concludes by reflecting on the role that anthropological research can play in enabling locals and tourists to perceive a comprehensive vision of their community's sociocultural environment, relationships, history, and tradition through food culture; thus, they can achieve a more authentic sense of self and more satisfying engagement with the people and places around them.