How Sicily Made its Sweet Symbols: Glocal Identity and Food

Abstract

The concept of symbol has always been very controversial for the science that studies the processes of signification, at the same time too rich in determinations by the common sense and too inconsistent from a formal point of view. A gastronomic example may be that of pizza and pasta that, at a certain moment, acquired the role of symbols of Italian gastronomy to the point of being perceived as fetishes of taste (which is both gastronomic thought and aesthetic sensibility) of this country. Everybody forgot not only how recent was their invention but also that they were just two of the several possible elements of an enormously more complex system.