Fascist foodways
Ricettari as propaganda for grain production and sexual reproduction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5407890 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Diana Garvin (0000-0003-1469-6953, University of Oregon, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 111-134 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Food and Foodways (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0740-9710 • E-ISSN: 1542-3484 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07409710.2021.1901384 |
| OpenAlex | W3153995375 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 21 |
Food connects people and land, a link that the Italian Fascist regime exploited through their seizure of local culinary culture for the promotion of national demographic goals. This article traces the connections between the regime’s concurrent drives for food production and sexual reproduction. It will show the propagandistic potential of recipes, and also the limits of top-down dietary change under dictatorship. Ricettari, propagandistic recipe pamphlets, blended public politics and private practices into a heady cocktail, one that cast autarkic cookery and sexual reproduction as valuable contributions to the Fascist state. These documents establish a clear link between the regime’s demographic policy and the autarkic campaigns in favor of Italian grain production. Cooking, the professed subject of ricettari, conveyed political neutrality—it falsely marked the documents as feminine and innocuous. So too did design: small and light, these stapled leaflets could be easily rolled up and stuck in an apron pocket. Portability thus insured that these documents could cross the threshold from the public rally to the private kitchen. Once there, they could directly address women, and attempt to modify their daily habits in ways that would change the body from the inside out. At stake in the ricettari lies a broader contribution to Food Studies in terms of food and politics: this unique form of ephemera reveals that the Italian Fascist regime took a pronatalist approach to cuisine
Biology · Dictatorship · Economics · Ephemera · Foodways · Ideology · Neutrality · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Production (economics) · Promotion (chess) · Reproduction · Sociology · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Ecology · European history and politics · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law
Cultures of the Abdomen
The Sex of Things
Around the Tuscan Table
Social Bodies
Challenging Contemporary Narrative Theory
Garlic and Oil
Dictating Demography
Fascist food politics
Memories of the Italian rice belt, 1945–65
Fare di ogni famiglia italiana un fortilizio’
Material Nation
The Foreign Policy of the Calorie
Measuring Mamma's Milk
How to Make a National Cuisine
Fascism in Popular Memory
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |