2012 Programme
Event #14
Marino Niola
Between organic and divine. Food as knowledge, resistance and penance
Fat-free, sugar-free, low-calory, no eggs, no milk, no GMOs. Nowadays we mostly expert our food to be “free” of something, and in spite of our best intentions, we are obsessed by an ideal of purity and lightness. So much attention to what we eat makes our eating habits a symptom of a generalized in security that we project onto food. Food controls are becoming reassuring substitutes for a reality that is getting out of hand. The result is a mixture of ethics and dietetics, health safety and salvation, normalization of the body and care of the soul. An exploration of the forms and functions of food in the society of in security: from bulimia to orthorexia, from the religion of slimness to the exponential spread of obesity, food is a symbolic entity that processes the contradictory aspects of the present and builds cognitive and ritual hooks to hang our fear from (duration: approx. 2 hours).
a well-known anthropologist of contemporary times, is Professor of Anthropology of Symbols at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, where he also heads a research lab on Mediterranean diet. His main research focus is the relationship between tradition and cultural change in contemporary societies and the persistence of myth in the contaminated forms of the present time. He is a member of the steering committee of AISEA, the Italian Association of Ethno-Anthropological Sciences. He is a frequent contributor to the newsdaily La Repubblica and writes a column entitled Today’s Myths in its Friday supplement. He also contributes to Le Nouvel Observateur, Locarno’s il caffè and Naples’ Il Mattino. Among his books are Totem e ragù. Divagazioni napoletane (Pironti, 2003); Don Giovanni o della seduzione (L’Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2005); I Santi patroni (2007), Si fa presto a dire cotto. Un antropologo in cucina (2009), and Non tutto fa brodo (2012) published by il Mulino; Miti d'oggi (Bompiani, September 2012).
Event #3
Anna Salvo
Sorrow is like a telescope that helps us look into the distance: creatività and suffering
Event #4
Andrea Moro
I speak, therefore I am Like the starry sky: visions of language across the centuries
Event #28
Mauro Agnoletti, Ilaria Borletti Buitoni
Culture, environment, landscape. For a possible, sustainable future
