ABSTRACT
This book arose from an international conference, held in March 2004, on ‘The Production of Food and Foodways in Asia’ which was jointly organized by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and the Department of Anthropology of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. With original data and new findings of scholars from different disciplines, the publication of selected and revised papers from this conference serves to broaden our knowledge of food and foodways in East and Southeast Asia. It contributes to the anthropological inquiry on how food is related to ethnic identity and boundary formation, consumerism and global food distribution, and the invention of local cuisine in the context of increasing cultural contact. The fourteen chapters in this book provide rich ethnographic description and analysis on food production as it interacts with social and political complexities in Asia’s diverse cultures.
