Re-inventing food: Alpine cheese in the age of global heritage = Re-inventing food: Le fromage alpin à l'ère de la globalisation du patrimoine

This article, based mainly on ethnographic examples of the transformation of traditional Alpine cheese-making systems, argues that a certain amount of standardization of traditional food systems is required in order to offer local products on a wider market basis. Nevertheless, this introduces important changes in the whole socio-technical system that underlies typical products: from raw material to product marketing. This also implies momentous changes about the ways in which local foods are produced, distributed and consumed, as well as in the ways they are socially and symbolically appropriated. Such reinvention of food can further mobilize local strategies for re-valuing intangible patrimony: local histories, material culture and landscapes. This is a complex and interconnected process, as highlighted by ethnographic examples provided – both from my own fieldwork and from current ethnographic literature. When food is reinvented as heritage, historical, juridical and logistical details count. This is particularly apparent in my ethnography of an Alpine valley of Northern Italy, which I interpret against the backdrop of a focused literature review providing an underlying theoretical perspective about the role of food in the age of global heritage.