As part of the 2nd Week of Italian Cuisine, held from November 20 to November 26 2017, promoted by MAECI (Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale) MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca) and MIPAAF (Ministero delle politiche agricole alimentari e forestali), the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal present the conference: “The role of food in the construction on urban identity” by Antida Gazzola.
November 22, 2017, 6pm – Free Admission
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montreal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Conference in Italian
The role of food in socialization is known and studied since many decades by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and other experts of human sciences. Food is an individual pleasure, but also an opportunity for exchange and communication. It is an object of interest for each person. We commonly say that we eat with our eyes before our mouth and that we evaluate the foods with the information available rather than before with our senses: food remains an inalienable connection between us and what the environment offer us under various fruitful, cultural and social aspects. The links of food with the social life of places have produced cultural values today recognized as part of the historic heritage of cities and territories. Cooking is a language with precise rules and food is one of the tools with which we create the identities through which we classify the world around us. Indeed, food greatly influences the building of national, regional and local identity, urban identity, class identity (what and how it is eaten) and role identity (who prepares and who consumes), which are formed on the basis of the models that have been proposed to us. Food grammar changes according to country. Italy, is well-known, is rich, for historical and geographical reasons, of highly diversified knowledge, traditions and customs that are reflected on the urban structure, on the supply of foods and on the ways in which they are consumed. The city of Genoa is an interesting example on which to dwell.
Antida GAZZOLA, born in Sanremo (IM), where she graduated in class, graduated in Genoa, obtaining her degree in law and specialization in Clinical Criminology with the highest marks and praise. She has been a consultant for O.N.U for a four-year (1989-1992). (SSE L / 3 33/89 contract) for training activities in favor of the Maghreb countries on topics related to the knowledge of the urban environment. In 2000-2001 she coordinated, in Genoa, one of the Italian working groups who collaborated with the MOST – UNESCO program “Les mots de la ville“. She is currently full time professor of Urban and Rural Sociology, Sociology of the Environment and Territory, and Sociology of the Environment and Communication at the Polytechnic School of the University of Genoa.
She is Vice President of CRAFTS (Applied Research Center and Training on Territorial and Social Dynamics).
Reservation no longer available