RISULTATI RICERCA

This essay focuses on the different identities of the Italian youth in the 1960s, particularly in relation to musical tastes. It starts from the consideration that wealth was not evenly distributed throughout the whole country in that decade; as a result, different ideals and cultural models existed among Italian young people according to their socio-geographic origin. The research is largely based on the Gigliola Cinquetti archive, and compares different type of sources: letters, magazines and records. While television constituted a fundamental instrument for the construction of the image of Italian pop stars, the mediation between the singer and her/his fans was conducted through popular magazines such as women’s or music magazines.

Youth and consumption during the 1950s: imagination and practices This article examines the way in which, over the course of the 1950s, Italian youth incorporated mass consumer products into a set of cultural practices that subverted those of older generations. The author examines these via an exposition of the tensions of generational attitudes towards consumption explored in the film I vinti (1952), the renegotiation of the lifestyles of young women in the popular press during the mid-1950s, and the apparent subversion of class difference amongst the fans of popular music towards the end of the decade, while recognising that while these changes may have lead to cultural emancipation, they also cemented the entry of youth into consumer capitalism.

This paper outlines phases in the history of Italian gastronomy in Germany over the course of the twentieth century, and of the entry of Italian cuisine into the mainstream Germany diet both in and out of the home. It relates this history to a range of German encounters with Italy including the wartime alliance that saw the opening of German markets to Italian food products, the arrival of Italians in Germany as ‘guest workers’, the increase in Germany tourist visits to Italy, and, above all the various imagined ‘Italian lifestyles’ that appealed to both old and new generations of Germans.

The invention of Venetian cuisine. Consumption, tourism and regional identity This article considers local recipe books as works for the preservation and diffusion of knowledge: they propose a gastronomic discourse, but, at the same time, they construct a local identity which is very meaningful, because food consumption concerns everyone and is related to rituals of sociability. The essay explores the ways in which representations of gastronomy and identity in Venice have changed in the principal local recipe books. In less than one century, the Venetian cuisine has moved from a weak reputation to an image of grande cuisine; from an overwhelmingly meat culture to one predominantly based on fish; from a cuisine influenced by practices typical of other towns of the Veneto region to one that looks principally to the Adriatic and the Lagoon. These changes are examined in the context of the major transformations during this period: new food consumption habits, the advent of mass tourism, and the difficult and shifting relationship between Venice’s historical centre and the mainland.

‘Italian style’ coffee beverages have become common throughout much of the developed and developing world in the last fifteen years. This article outlines five phases in the globalisation of Italian espresso elite, exotic, ethnic, speciality, branded linking these to the image and associations of the beverage. It shows how differing consumer needs in various markets were met through material adaptations to the beverages themselves, enabling them to be placed at the centre of a variety of consumption practices, and to sustain a variety of symbolic values that were be constructed around them.

The Italian coffee bar is today seen as a symbol of the ‘traditional’ lifestyle of the country, a rallying point against the Americanisation of daily life. Yet Italian espresso is a twentieth century product whose role as a mass consumer good only began in the 1950s. This article traces both the technical evolution of espresso via the improvement of the coffee machine, and the creation of a new culture of consumption with its own set of conventions. The various agents within the coffee business are considered machine makers, coffee roasters and bar proprietors as are the contests between them. The article shows how espresso has acquired a ‘history’ that has become an essential part of its identity.