Food and Identity In the Urban Landscape

Summary

Landscapes and foodways are intrinsically connected. Food practices act as a frame of reference to impose social, historical, and cultural meanings on places and vice-versa; their materiality provides a sense of stability in shifting demographic settings. Culinary activities can help structure the experience of place and through repetition become involved in the creation and transmission of collective memory. However, memory is far from stagnant, it continues to be challenged and reworked in everyday life; material culture is an essential part of this process. This is exemplified by some neighborhoods in New York City, such as Little Italy in Manhattan and Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, areas that received an influx of immigration from Italy in the early 20th century. After 1920, Italian immigration largely subsided and new waves of Chinese, Hispanic, and Eastern European immigrants have settled in these neighborhoods. Yet, both are still thought of as "Italian neighborhoods", due to the large number of Italian food establishments that remain. The paper uses an ethnohistorical approach to examine how food as artifact of the past, helps maintain a particular Italian identity in a social landscape where it is no longer a demographic reality.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Consuming Landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage