N. 2 (2024)
Dossier - Cibo di qualità: le sfide del diritto

Tra stratificazione sociale e razzializzazione: l’uso politico del cibo “perfetto”

pdf
Monica Raiteri
Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Sezione di scienze giuridiche, economiche e sociali, Università degli Studi di Macerata
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54103/1972-5760/27870

Pubblicato 2025-01-20

Parole chiave

  • Sicurezza alimentare,
  • Regolazione,
  • Mobilità sociale,
  • Imperialismo,
  • Età vittoriana

Come citare

Raiteri, M. (2025). Tra stratificazione sociale e razzializzazione: l’uso politico del cibo “perfetto”. Sociologia Del Diritto, 51(2). https://doi.org/10.54103/1972-5760/27870

Copyright (c) 2024 Monica Raiteri

Creative Commons License

Questo lavoro è fornito con la licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0.

Abstract

La qualità del cibo è oggi considerata un dispositivo normativo funzionale alla declinazione di un particolare concetto di sicurezza, quella alimentare. Lo strumento utilizzato, tipico dei modelli regolativi, è l’adesione ai disciplinari, che fa corrispondere la “qualità” ad uno standard di produzione o di provenienza territoriale che è, a sua volta, esito del funzionamento di dinamiche di potere e di lobbying tipicamente operanti nelle sedi delle istituzioni europee, come testimoniano i processi decisionali relativi al riconoscimento delle certificazioni (DOP, IGP, ecc.).

L’origine dell’idea del cibo “perfetto”, corrispondente ad uno standard, che svolge al contempo una funzione che può risultare inclusiva delle classi sociali, come mostra per esempio la rilevanza dell’alimentazione nei processi educativi, o, viceversa, escludente, risale all’Inghilterra vittoriana: un’epoca in cui la costruzione dell’impianto normativo della qualità degli alimenti, strumento individuato come idoneo a risolvere le numerose questioni legate all’insicurezza alimentare, per lo più ereditate dal secolo precedente, si colloca sullo sfondo di importanti questioni sociopolitiche.

Il saggio prende le mosse dall’ambiguità del rapporto tra sanzioni amministrative e apparati di controllo di carattere “privato” nel contesto del modello regolativo contemporaneo per giungere ad indagare, a partire dalle sue origini, un uso “politico” del cibo inteso come dispositivo normativo, che mette in discussione sia il sistema di stratificazione sociale tipico della società vittoriana, come mostra il caso della diffusione dei cibi esotici nell’alimentazione inglese, sia il tema mainstream del rapporto tra povertà e cattiva qualità degli alimenti, come mostra il dibattito sulla sofisticazione dei prodotti alimentari.

pdf

Downloads

I dati di download non sono ancora disponibili.

Riferimenti bibliografici

  1. Accum, F., (1821), Culinary Chemistry Exhibiting the Scientific Prin-ciples of Cookery, London, Ackerman.
  2. Arnold, D., (1994), The discovery of malnutrition and diet in colonial India, Indian Economic&Social History, 31, 1, pp. 1-26.
  3. Atkins, P.J., (1992), White Poison? The Social Consequences of Milk Consumption, 1850-1930, Social History of Medicine, 5, pp. 207-227.
  4. Ballard, E., (1870), On a Localised Outbreak of Typhoid Fever in Is-lington, The Medical Times and Gazette, 2, pp. 611-617.
  5. Bickham, T., (2008), Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cook-ery and Imperialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Past&Present, 198, pp. 71-109.
  6. Bickham, T., (2020), Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eight-eenth-Century Britain, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
  7. Bourne, S., (1886), Foreign and Colonial Tariffs as Influencing Prices and Affecting Trade, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 49, 2, pp. 273-313.
  8. Brian, J.M., (2006), The Local Implementation of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875, PhD thesis, The Open University.
  9. Bullock, A., (2012), The cosmopolitan cookbook: Glass, taste, and foreign foods in Victorian cookery books, Food, Culture and Socie-ty, 15, 3, pp. 437-454.
  10. Burke, C., (2005), Contested Desires: The Edible Landscape of School, Paedagogica Historica, 41, 4-5, pp. 571-587.
  11. Camanzi, L., Hammoudi, A., Malorgio, G., (2019), Stakeholder per-ception of EU food safety governance: the case of EU fruit and vegetable imports from Southern Mediterranean Countries, New Medit: Mediterranean Journal of Economics, Agriculture and Envi-ronment=Révue Méditerranéenne d’Economie Agriculture et Envi-ronment, 18, 4, pp. 19-34.
  12. Casey, E., (2019), From Cookery in Colour to The Great British Bake Off: Shifting gendered accounts of home-baking and domesticity, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 22, 5-6, pp. 579-594.
  13. Charnley, B., (2008), Arguing over adulteration: the success of the An-alytical Sanitary Commission, Endeavour, 32, 4, pp. 129-133.
  14. Cole, L., (2021), Plagues, Poisons, and Dead Rats: A Multispecies History, in McHugh, S., McKay, R., Miller, J., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature, Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 589-603.
  15. Cole, L., (2023), Defoe and Ecology, in Seager, N., Downie, J.A., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe, Oxford University Press, 2023, pp. 451-468.
  16. Collingham, L., (2017), The Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World, New York, Basic Books.
  17. Collins, E.J.T., (1993), Food adulteration and food safety in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Food Policy, 18, 2, pp. 95-109.
  18. Corte costituzionale Italiana, sentenza n. 40/2024.
  19. Davidson, A., (1983), Food: The Natural History of British Cookery Books, The American Scholar, 52, 1, pp. 98-106.
  20. de Haen, H., (2000), Qualità e salubrità degli alimenti nel contesto del-la globalizzazione, QA La Questione Agraria, 2, pp. 49-64.
  21. Dietler, M., (2007), Culinary Encounters: Food, Identity, and Colonial-ism, in Twiss, K., ed., The Archaelogy of Food and Identity, Car-bondale, University of Southern Illinois, pp. 218-242.
  22. Durbach, N., (2020), Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
  23. Feinstein, C.H., (1998), Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain During and After the Industrial Revo-lution, Journal of Economic History, 93, pp. 625-658.
  24. Finlay, M.R., (1992), Quackery and cookery: Justus von Liebig’s ex-tract of meat and the theory of nutrition in the Victorian age, Bulletin of the history of medicine, 66, 3, pp. 404-418.
  25. Fisher, J.L., (2012), Tea and Food Adulteration, 1834-75, BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (ultimo accesso 2/10/2024).
  26. Floyd, J., (2017), Simple, honest food: Elizabeth David and the con-struction of nation in cookery writing, The Recipe Reader: Narra-tives - Contexts - Traditions, pp. 127-144.
  27. Hardy, A., (2004), Methods of Outbreak Investigation in the “Era of Bacteriology” 1880-1920, in Morabia, A., ed., A History of Epide-miologic Methods and Concepts, Berlin, Birkhauser Verlag, pp. 199-208.
  28. Hassall, A.H., (1855), Food and its adulterations: Comprising the re-ports of the analytical sanitary commission of “the lancet” for the years 1851 to 1854 inclusive, London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
  29. Hassall, A.H., (1872), Health Officers as Public Analysts, The Lan-cet, 100, Issue 2567, p. 689.
  30. Hodge, J.M., (2007), Triumph of the expert: Agrarian doctrines of de-velopment and the legacies of British colonialism, Athens, Ohio University Press.
  31. Hodge, J.M., (2011), Colonial experts, developmental and environ-mental doctrines, and the legacies of late British colonialism, in Folke Ax, C., Brimnes, N., Thode Jensen, N., Oslund, K., eds., Cultivating the Colonies. Colonial States and their environmental legacies, Athens, Ohio University Press.
  32. Horton, L.R., (1998), Food from Developing Countries: Steps to Im-prove Compliance, Food and Drug Law Journal, 53, 1, pp. 139-172.
  33. Howell, J., (2021), Victorian Race and the Inhospitable British Cli-mate, Victorian Review, 47, 1, pp. 1-4.
  34. Kamminga, H., Cunningham, A., (1995), eds., The Science and Cul-ture of Nutrition, 1840-1940, Amsterdam, Rodopi.
  35. Kupperman, K.O., (1984), Fear of Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Colonial Experience, William and Mary Quarterly, 41, 2, pp. 213-240.
  36. Lepage, Y., (2002), Évolution de la consommation d’aliments carnés aux XIXe et XXe siècles en Europe occidentale, Révue belge de philologie et d’histoire 80, 4, pp. 1459-1468.
  37. Letheby, H., On the Economy of Food, Journal of Royal Society of Arts, 20/3/1857, 5226, pp. 269-278.
  38. Lieffers, C., (2012), “The present time is eminently scientific”: The science of cookery in nineteenth-century Britain, Journal of Social History, 45, 4, pp. 936-959.
  39. Lizzi, R., (2014), I gruppi di interesse in agricoltura, Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche, 3, pp. 467-496.
  40. London, J., (2014), Tragedy, Transformation, and Triumph: Compar-ing the Factors and Forces that Led to the Adoption of the 1860 Adulteration Act in England and the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act in the United States, Food and Drug Law Journal, 69, 2, pp. 315-342.
  41. Lorimer, D., (1988), Theoretical Racism in Late-Victorian Anthropolo-gy 1870-1900, Victorian Studies, 31, 3, pp. 405-430.
  42. Manning, L., Soon, J.M., (2014), Developing systems to control food adulteration, Food Policy, 49, pp. 23-32.
  43. Mapother, E.D., (1865), Suggestions for Improving the Diet of the Irish Laborer, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 71, pp. 512-519.
  44. Mukherjee, U.P., (2013), Natural disasters and Victorian Empire. Famines, Fevers and Literary Cultures of South Asia, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
  45. Narayan, U., (1995), Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity and Indi-an Food, Social Identities. Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 1,1, pp. 63-86.
  46. Newman, G., (1906), The administrative Control of Food, Public Health: The Journal of Incorporated Society of Medical Officers of Health, 19, 2, pp. 65-86.
  47. Page, A., (2023), ‘The True Food of the Brain’: protéines et construc-tions raciales en Angleterre, 1840-1910, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, 97, pp. 1-12, http://journals.openedition.org/cve/13131 (ultimo accesso 2/10/2024).
  48. Phillips, J., French, M., (1998), Adulteration and Food Law, 1899-1939, Twentieth Century British History, 9, 3, pp. 350-369.
  49. Quilty, M., (2018), Rice and potato-eaters. Labour, wages and race in the political economy of British colonial administrators in Southeast Asia, in Knapman, G., Milner, A., Quilty, M., eds., Liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia, Routledge, pp. 96-120.
  50. Raiteri, M., (2004), Diritto, regolazione, controllo, Milano, Giuffrè.
  51. Raiteri, M., (2018), Viva la pappa col pomodoro. Quello che le deci-sioni sulle scelte alimentari alternative a scuola non dicono, in Fran-cesconi, C., Raiteri, M., a cura di, Pratiche alimentari e relazioni sociali, Milano, FrancoAngeli, pp. 140-158.
  52. Raiteri, M., (2024), Ecosistemi ostili: un’impronta vittoriana sulla que-stione ecologica? Omaggio a Silvana Castignone, Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica, 2024, in corso di pubblicazione.
  53. Rappaport, E., (2005), Packaging China. Foreign Articles and Danger-ous Tastes in the Mid-Victorian Tea Party, in Trentmann, F., ed., The Making of the Consumer Knowledge. Power and Identity in the Modern World, Oxford, New York, Berg, pp. 125-146.
  54. Rioux, S., (2019a), The Social Cost of Cheap Food, McGill-Queen’s University Press.
  55. Rioux, S., (2019b), Capitalist food production and the rise of legal adulteration: Regulating food standards in 19th-century Britain, Journal of Agrarian Change, 19, 1, pp. 64-81.
  56. Rowlinson, P.J., (1982), Food Adulteration. Its Control in 19th Centu-ry Britain, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 7, 1, pp. 63-72.
  57. Rozin, P., (1977), The Use of Characteristic Flavorings in Human Cul-inary Practice, in Apt, C.M., ed., Flavor: Its Chemical, Behavioral, and Commercial Aspects, Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, pp. 111-113.
  58. Safford, A.H., (1874), The Adulteration of Food Act, 1872, Law Magazine and review: A Monthly Journal of Jurisprudence and In-ternational Law, For Both Branches Of The Legal Profession At Home And Abroad, 4th Series, 3, p. 532.
  59. Schivelbusch, W., (1992), Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants, New York, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
  60. Scott, W.L., (1861), On Food: Its Adulterations and the Methods of Detecting Them, Journal of the Society of Arts, 9, n. 428, pp. 153-162.
  61. Smith, W.D., (1992), Complications of the Commonplace: Tea, Sugar and Imperialism, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23, 2, pp. 259-278.
  62. Steere-Williams, J. (2015), Milking Science for its Worth: The Reform of the British Milk Trade in the Late Nineteenth Century, Agricul-tural History, 89, 2, pp. 263-288.
  63. Steere-Williams, J., (2010), The perfect food and the filth disease: Milk-borne typhoid and epidemiological practice in late Victorian Britain, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 65, 4, pp. 514-545.
  64. Taylor, J. (2021), “Books Frighted Them Terribly”: The Perils of Propagating Fear and the Ethics of Writing about Disease in De-foe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Literature and Medicine, 39, 2, pp. 399-420.
  65. Vernon, J., (2005), The Ethics of Hunger and the Assembly of Society; The Techno-Politics of the School Meal in Modern Britain, Ameri-can Historical Review, 110, 3, pp. 693-724.
  66. Waddington, K., (2003), ‘Unfit for Human Consumption’: Tu-bercolosis and the Problem of Infected Meat in Late-Victorian Brit-ain, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 77, pp. 636-661.
  67. Waddington, K., (2011), The Dangerous Sausage: Diet, Meat and Dis-ease in Victorian Britain, Cultural and Social History, 8, 1, pp. 51-71.
  68. Waddington, K., (2013), ‘We Don’t Want Any German Sausages Here!’. Food, Fear, and the German Nation in Victorian and Ed-wardian Britain, Journal of British Studies, 52, 4, pp. 1017-1042.
  69. Warhurst, G., (2024), Chronicles of Safety: Evolution of laws UK Food Standards, Food Science and Technology, 38, pp. 25-29.
  70. Whyte, K.P., (2018), Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peo-ples: An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance, in Barnhill, A. et al., Oxford Handbook on Food Ethics, chapter 16, Oxford University Press, pp. 345-56.
  71. Worboys, M., (2000), Spreading Germs, Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-versity Press.
  72. Zlotnick, S., (1996), Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cook-books in Victorian England, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Stud-ies, 16, 2/3, pp. 51-68.