Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The origins of the Slow Food movement can be traced to the Northern Italian
counterculture of the 1970s, in which young socialists in Piedmont began to em-
brace the traditional music, agriculture and food of the region. Together they formed
a loosely knit organization called Arcigola, which was the gastronomic wing of the
Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana (ARCI)
, the Italian Cultural Recreation-
al Association (Andrews
2008
; Petrini
2001a
). Arcigola was led by Carlo Petrini,
an Italian food and wine journalist, who had become increasingly concerned about
the threat posed to local foods, wines and cultures in Italy because of competition
from global fast food chains and the rapid growth of industrialized farming that
was seen as destroying local, age-old practices enshrined in permaculture ideas that
had sustained the land and people for centuries (Mollison
1988
; Holmgren
2003
).
Outraged by the opening of the first McDonald's restaurant in Italy in the Piazza
di Spagna, one of Rome's iconic places, Petrini led a protest against the chain, a
protest that involved eating plates of a local dish,
penne
, outside the fast food outlet.
Three years later, the Slow Food International movement was officially inaugurated
on 10th December 1989 when delegates from twenty countries met in Paris and
endorsed the movement's manifesto (Petrini
2001b
). Since this time the movement
has grown to include over 100,000 members with 'convivia' (local groups of mem-
bers) in 132 countries.
Andrews (
2008
) has provided a comprehensive overview of the rise and politics
of the Slow Food movement. Its philosophy is based on 'eco-gastronomy', which
refers to how food is produced, distributed and consumed. The core principle of the
movement is that food should be 'good, clean and fair'. 'Good' means that food
should give pleasure; 'clean' means that it should harm neither human welfare nor
the environment; and 'fair' refers to the insistence that food producers should re-
ceive adequate compensation for their labour. Petrini has written extensively about
the philosophy and aims of the movement (2001, 2006, 2007 and 2009). In 1997 the
Slow Food Congress was held in the historic city of Orvieto—a market town of 21
thousand people in Umbria (Italy) dramatically located on a volcanic outcrop set in
a wide valley that was a historic route between Rome and Florence. At this meeting
Petrini first introduced the idea of extending and applying the principles of Slow
Food to urban design and living. Two years later the Cittaslow (literally, Slow City)
movement was formally established when the mayors of the four founding cities
(Bra, Greve, Orvieto and Positano) signed the Cittaslow Charter, along with Petrini
and the Slow Food movement. The Charter had been drawn up at the initiative of
the movement's founder Paolo Saturnini, then mayor of Greve in the Chianti area
of Tuscany, a small historic market town of 14 thousand inhabitants. The other two
founding towns are also unique places: Bra, in Piedmont, is a market town of 30,000
people, 50 km south of Turin, the home of Petrini, and is now the site of the first
University of Gastronomy. Positano is a former fishing village in the middle of the
Amalfi coast south of Naples, which has been transformed into a chic tourist resort
since the 1950s. Figure
15.1
shows that these founding centres are in different parts
of Italy with varied regional and historical traditions. It also shows the distinctive
Cittaslow logo which depicts buildings on the back of a snail, clearly a link back to
part of the Medici logo and motto.
