Food and ethnographies of folk life: applying a theory of food as intangible cultural heritage to Passing the Time in Ballymenone

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ABSTRACT Henry Glassie’s Passing the Time in Ballymenone – Culture and History of an Ulster Community (1982) is a touchstone text in anthropological, folklore, material culture, and ethnographic scholarship in Irish Studies and beyond. In spite of its numerous references to agriculture, cooking, and eating, it remains underexplored with respect to its capture of aspects of twentieth century foodways on the island of Ireland. This essay argues that Glassie’s text (and ethnographies of folklife more broadly) provides rich material for understanding how vernacular food culture comprises intangible cultural heritage as defined by UNESCO (Mac Con Iomaire, 2018).