Tasting Cultural Ecology: Foodscapes of Sustainability in the Mediterranean Available to Purchase

This essay samples situated perspectives on food, history, and landscape in the Mediterranean. Reflecting on moments of ethnographic research made resonant by particular tastes, it considers how sustainable foodscapes on the island of Sardinia, Italy, are rooted in both family relations and property systems. It focuses on household and community production in the Ogliastra, a rural area on the eastern coast of Sardinia. This enables a critical examination of models of ethical consumption, from the perspective of rural producers. Tastes like the delectable roast meat, goat ricotta, and bitter honey that come from the Ogliastra challenge us to think about such places, not as abstract ecological systems, but as living, adapting communities. Such unique flavors are protected today, not by faddish consumers or ethical gastronomes, but by the residents who value the legacy of the Commons and their own deeply social connections to its generative potential.