Immaginari di natura. Mangiare e coltivare cibo baladìì (locale) nel Territori Palestinesi

Abstract

Food mediates intensive symbolical meanings in different cultures and environments, but in contemporary context food is at the centre of a process of fetishisation: is legitimate to talk about food transcending form the contexts of production, form agri/ cultures and from the dynamics of inequality that are hidden in food, starting from land and farmers. In the Palestinian context, narratives of biological food have taken place and it is generally renamed as “baladii”, local food: in aid policies, as new market product of local and transnational elite, in a coincidence of meaning with purity, authenticity or traditional. For those who cultivate their own food in small gardens close to home, baladii food states the political dimension of the local facing colonial discipline and high constraints and dependencies in the access to resources: food, as farming, makes explicit contested and interrelated imaginaries of nature and society between Israeli and Palestinians, which started with the colonial encounter a century ago (the encounter of the kibbutzin e fellahin, peasant), in order to understand present ecological practices “down to earth” of small farmers today.

Keywords

• local food
• politics of nature
• fellahin
• local knowledge
• mimesis
• habbala