The pleasure of diversity in Slow Food’s ethics of taste

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to open up the debate about Slow Food's ethics of taste by considering the way in the Slow Food subject relates to its cultural “other.” Drawing on four recent articles on Slow Food in Food, Culture and Society as well as examples of Slow Food's activities at the local and international level, I wish to demonstrate how Slow Food's efforts to develop an ethics of taste are, to some extent, undermined by its failure to adequately challenge its own elitism and privilege. I argue that the challenge for Slow Food is to recognize its own heritage of privilege derived from an economic system shaped by imperialism and to actively resist nostalgic renderings of the “other,” however well intentioned, which run the risk of fetishizing cultural diversity and sentimentalizing struggles for cultural or economic survival. This requires more meaningful dialogue between Slow Food and those it seeks to support in order to create a space of mutual respect and recognition of difference.