Building a Topic: Food in Romanian Ethnology
Building a Topic: Food in Romanian Ethnology

Summary/Abstract: The main question this study aims to answer is how Romanian ethnology has tackled the database of memory and behavior referring to food, so well-regulated but also so sophisticated, along a history of one century and a half. Also, how what can be defined as the ethnology of Romanian food has been built in time. The study focuses only on the works published by Romanian ethnologists or by amateurs with an interest in food. A complex analysis of Romanian ethnology cannot ignore the numerous “projects” about writing down and, implicitly, preserving information about traditional food (from vocabulary to traditions related to certain dishes). The article deliberately leaves aside such research intentions, describing and interpreting only the visible side of things, the only one which, in time, has been accessible both to the general public and to the most important groups of specialists.

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