Food, Drink and Identity in Europe

Thomas M. Wilson

Jan 2006 · European studies : an interdisciplinary series in European culture, history and politics Ibhuku elingu-22 · Rodopi

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Scholars across the humanities and social sciences are increasingly examining the importance of consumption to changing notions of local, regional, national and supranational identity in Europe. As part of this interest, anthropologists, historians, sociologists and others have paid particular attention to the roles which food and drink have played in the construction of local, regional and national identity in Europe. This volume provides the first multidisciplinary look at the contributions which food and alcohol make to contemporary European identities, including the part they play in processes of European integration and Europeanization. It provides theoretically informed ethnographic and historical case studies of transformations and continuity in social and cultural patterns in the production and consumption of European foods and drinks, in order to explore how eating and drinking have helped to construct various local, regional and national identities in Europe. Of particular note in this volume is its attention to how food and drink intersect with recent attempts to foster greater European integration, in part through the recognition and support of common and diverse European cultures and identities.

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Thomas M. Wilson is Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He has conducted ethnographic field research in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Hungary on European integration, international borders and national identity. He is the co-author of Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (1999) and The Anthropology of Ireland (2006) and the editor of Drinking Cultures (2005). He is also the co-editor of the quarterly journal Identities: Global Studies of Culture and Power.