Food, Festival and Religion: Materiality and Place in Italy (Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion)

Synopsis

Food, Festival and Religion explores how communities in northern Italy find a restorative sense of place through foodways, costuming and other forms of materiality. Festivals examined by the author vary geographically from the northern rural corners of Italy to the fashionable heart of urban Milan. The origins of these lived religious events range from Christian to vernacular Italian witchcraft and contemporary Paganism, which is rapidly growing in Italy. Francesca Ciancimino Howell demonstrates that during ritualized occasions the sacred is located within the mundane. She argues that communal feasting, pilgrimage, rituals and costumed events can represent forms of lived religious materiality. Building on the work of scholars including Foucault, Grimes and Ingold, Howell offers a theoretical “Scale of Engagement” which further tests the interfaces between and among the materialities of place, food, ritual and festivals and provides a widely-applicable model for analyzing grassroots events and community initiatives.Through extensive ethnographic research and fieldwork data, this book demonstrates that popular Italian festivals can be ritualized, liminal spaces, contributing greatly to the fields of religious, performance and ritual studies.

Copyright:

2018

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781350020870

Related ISBNs:

9781350020863

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Publishing

Date of Addition:

01/11/19

Copyrighted By:

Francesca Ciancimino Howell

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Cooking, Food and Wine, Religion and Spirituality, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.