The Everyday as Extraordinary: Revitalization, Religion, and the Elevation of Cucina Casareccia to Heritage Cuisine in Pietrelcina, Italy

Abstract

This chapter focuses on nearly three years of ethnographic research on socio-cultural revitalization in Pietrelcina, a Southern Italian village whose inhabitants have begun to reformulate their identity based on a valorization of particular elements of their culture they imagine to have flourished during the late 1800's, a period in which the saint and stigmatic, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, lived in the town. The chapter argues that heritage cuisine can play a significant role in cultural revitalization movements within small-scale societies. The members of Pietrelcina view their society as an organism, and perceive it as sickly and in danger of perishing at the hands of outside influences. In 1956, anthropologist Anthony Wallace proposed his model of a revitalization movement, which he defined as a 'deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture'. As early as 1976, the town council and the Pro-Loco held the first festival celebrating the artichoke, the 'Sagra del Carciofo'.

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