The renaissance of sausage: The role of Kranjska sausage in the contemporary process of reconstructing the Slovenian nation

Abstract

The article discusses the contemporary reconstruction of the Kranjska sausage as a national dish by exploring different actors in this process. This representative culinary object played a significant role in the formation and development of Slovene national consciousness from the Spring of Nations onward, faced devaluation in socialist era and experienced a renaissance in the new millennium, when it was also given a role in the project of the construction of the nation‐state. The modern rebirth of the Kranjska sausage is presented as an interrelated and complex process due to many factors: the efforts of an influential ethnologist, the role of an institution dedicated to the Kranjska sausage, and other persons, groups, and institutions with different objectives, ideas, and understandings. The article conceptualizes nationalizing as an everyday practice, as a network, or collection of people, practices, places, institutions, ideologies, objects, technologies, and ideas that define people's subjectivity and shape their actions and imaginations.

Vsakdanji nacionalizem in kranjska klobasa med slovenskimi izseljenci v ZDA

“…Kot je mojstrsko pokazal Massimo Montanari (1998), so politična, časovna razmejevanja z vidika kulturne zgodovine hrane in prehranjevanja pogosto arbitrarna. Z drugimi besedami, kulturna zgodovina kranjske klobase ni dekla politične zgodovine (Mlekuž, 2017(Mlekuž, , 2018(Mlekuž, , 2020. A vendarle, obdobje med svetovnima vojnama je z vidika (slovenskih) izseljenskih skupnosti drugačno od predhodnega -ZDA so takrat v veliki meri zaprla vrata za priseljevanje, kar pomeni, da so se izseljenske skupnosti relativno »ustalile«.…”