Abstract

In Europe a number of production and communication strategies have long tried to establish local products as resources for local development. At the foot of the Alps, this scenario appears in all its contradictions, especially in relation to cheese production. The Heritage Arena focuses on the saga of Strachitunt, a cheese that has been designated an EU Protected Designation of Origin after years of negotiation and competition involving cheese-makers, merchants, and Slow Food activists. The book explores how the reinvention of cheese as a form of heritage is an ongoing and dynamic process rife with conflict and drama.

“For the interested reader, there is a wealth of information in The Heritage Arena. The book, and especially sections of it, would work well in graduate seminars on food, food politics, and heritage. It will appeal to scholars who work on the anthropology of food, especially those who do research in Europe and Italy, as well as those who look at cheese production. Scholars of heritage will also find its treatment of heritage as discursively produced and articulated within complex value-production structures important.” • Anthropos

“Grasseni writes with a confident hand, deftly analyzing the interplay of the richly varied political forces at work in a small Alpine region of Italy of which she has deep knowledge as a “native” critically distanced by long years abroad and by her calling as an anthropologist.”
 • Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University


“The book is meticulously researched with great detail on the production, naming, localization, politics, and marketing of cheese in the Bergamo area of the Lombardy region of Italy.” • Carole Counihan, Millersville University


“This book is a thoroughly engaging, in-depth look at the struggles between diverse cheesemakers. It demonstrates that a simple cheese is actually the product of complex performances and power relations, as it is constantly being re-invented and re-presented in relation to other actors’ positions.” • Michael A. Di Giovine, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Cristina Grasseni is a Professor of Anthropology at Leiden University (the Netherlands).