Heritage Arena

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

“Grasseni’s book is a real tour de force that highlights the ways in which meaning is created and sometimes reinvented, and how stories are told both to outsiders and to the storytellers themselves in order to realize the economic and political value in a heritage product.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)“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

• List of Tables, Figures and MapsAcknowledgementsIntroductionWhy cheese?Calibrating cheesePost transhumant timescapesPART I: THE WAR OF THE CHEESESChapter 1. Patrimonio and TipicitàThe Entrepreneur as SovereignThe Language of TipicitàChapter 2. Cultures of ResistanceThe ‘Mother of all Battles’: Slow Food Bitto versus PDO BittoThe Niche PDO: Formai de MutThe Unachieved PDO: BranziConclusion of Part IPART II: WE, THE PEOPLE OF VAL TELEGGIOChapter 3. A geography of OppositesStraddling uplands and lowlandsHow Taleggio cheese failed the Taleggio valleyChapter 4. The Best Cheese in ItalyPDO Italian Style?The public trial of StrachituntConclusion of Part IIPART III: DULCAMARA'S SENSESChapter 5. Marketing the SensoriumSlow Food and the Geometry of Val TaleggioTaliban and ImproversChapter 6.  Reinventing StracchinoDeciphering a MealPerforming CheeseConclusion of Part IIIConclusionReferences