Good Food and Nice People. Hospitality and the Construction of Quality Among the Italian Middle Class

This chapter addresses the aesthetical and ethical dimension of ordinary food consumption in contemporary Italy. In particular, we consider how Italian middle-class families bestow value onto food by constructing its “quality”. Reference to the local territory is often employed to construct a notion of food quality that is typically set against notions of globalization and massification; likewise reference to greenness and sustainability are contrasted with industrialism and corporate interests. Green, local food is appreciated both for its aesthetic and ethic prerogatives. Quality food becomes an aesthetic and ethic dispositive used to portray visions of personal as well as family wellbeing. These visions are carefully performed during dinner parties which work as rituals that mark and fix the meanings attached to food in ordinary life. The chapter thereby starts by considering party-giving and how this social occasion helps us understand the aesthetics and ethics of food consumption in Italy. From the onset of our study, it was evident that hospitality, and dinner parties in particular, still play a fundamental role in the ceremonial consolidation of meanings around food consumption. As we shall see, food consumption experiences are organized to stress domestic intimacy and familiar identity through food and, at the same time, negotiate gender relations. These meaning dynamics likewise construct a notion of food quality which is both aesthetically and ethically charged.