Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
theoldFiatLingottoplantintoamassiveshoppingcomplexwithagrocery,movietheat-
er, and hotel. In recent years this site has picked up considerably in popularity with the
addition of Turin's Eataly grocery store, cooking school, and restaurant with a series of
kitchens specializing in single course meals, all featuring locally produced Slow Food
among young, fitness, and health conscious professionals who don't have time to cook,
yet still have very well trained palates and high standards of consumption and are now
willing to frequent a restaurant that in spite of its claims to being part of the Slow Food
movement might be characterized as serving impersonal, albeit healthier and authentic-
ally Italian fast food. In late 2010 an Eataly site opened in Manhattan near the historic
Flatiron Building on Twenty-Third Street and it's even more popular than the original
Turin location, attracting millions of New Yorkers and tourists for a rather expensive
taste of Italian cuisine. Turin has also recently exported a Gelato site, Grom, which like
Eataly promises consumers healthy, Slow Food, rooted in the cultural and territorial tra-
ditions of Piedmontese gastronomy. In July 2007, Fiat relaunched in Turin with great
ceremonial display along the River Po and culminating in the grand Piazza San Carlo
its iconic automobile, the “500” or“Cinquecento.” The Cinquecento was released inthe
United States in 2011, promoted by the international pop star, Jennifer Lopez. The ex-
pansion of Eataly, Grom, and the Cinquecento seem to provide evidence that Turinese
arebecoming moreglobally minded andopentocultural differences, butthese develop-
ments may instead point more strongly to the emergence and exportation of an ethnore-
gionalist culinary identity and consumerist culture.
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Another noteworthy development is that every warm night of the week until early
in the morning, except for Sunday, bars with tables covering sidewalks and in piazzas
are packed with young Italians. The Italian press refers to these youth soirees as “La
Movida,” actually a Spanish term for the end of the Black Satanic Mills of industry and
the culture of tourism and consumerism. Yet as much as it is tempting to characterize
this in uplifting terms as evidence of globalization and expanded wealth, many of these
consuming youth are unemployed. Like the Eataly phenomenon, this spectacle of con-
tented consumerism and sociality hides the ugly underbelly of growing poverty, unem-
ployment, poor working conditions, very low birth rates, intolerance, and anti-Islamic,
anti-Black racism hidden from the nonanalyst. Like much of Northern Italy, Turin of
Piedmont is struggling to contain social transformation within the logic of its own in-
wardlydirectedandspatiallyinscribednotionsofontologicallypure,traditional,andau-
thentic ways of being.
As Italy seeks to grapple with its new identity as part of the European Union and as
a country of immigration, some effort has been made by local governments and NGOs
to promote acceptance of cultural differences. But in general the country has relapsed