Environment, regulation and the moral economy of food in the Slow Food movement

Abstract

This article studies ways in which the Slow Food movement creates spaces for political action and elaborates new normative systems, imagining new forms of economy. Taking quality consumption and production, respect for the environment, and the rights of small producers as its core aims, this movement has today become an actor in the larger debates concerning the problematics of food, agriculture and fishing. At the same time, Slow Food is a legitimate actor in spaces of political and social contestation and applies its philosophy of a sustainable economy (represented in the triad  'good, clean and fair') globally to defend local production. Slow Food makes gastronomic diversity an element of biological and environmental diversity. This article is based on fieldwork carried out since 2006 within the French and Italy networks of the movement and in its Italian headquarters. The article analyzes the interrelations between economy, legality and environment in some Slow Food projects such as the presidia projects. Through the presidia, the movement plays an active role in the production of new norms that permit the imagination of a moral economy of food.

Keywords: Slow Food, norms, economy, typicity, food activism