Slow food and the politics of pork fat: Italian food and European identity

This paper explores the emergence of the Slow Food Movement, an international consumer movement dedicated to the protection of 'endangered foods.' The history of one of these 'endangered foods', lardo di Colonnata, provides the ethnographic window through which I examine Slow Food's cultural politics. The paper seeks to understand the politics of 'slowness' within current debates over European identity, critiques of neo-liberal models of rationality, and the significant ideological shift towards market-driven politics in advanced capitalist societies.