Culinary Nationalism in Asia

This collection of essays proposes a critical, comparative framework for the study of modern foodways, both inside and outside of Asia, through the crucial lens of culinary nationalism. With culinary nationalism defined as a process in flux, opposed to the limited concept of national cuisine, the contributors of this book call for explicit critical comparisons of cases of culinary nationalism within regions, with the intention of recognizing regional patterns of modern culinary development. As a result, the formation of modern cuisine is revealed to be a process that takes place around the world, in different forms and periods, and not exclusive to current Eurocentric models.

The book, which includes a foreword from Krishnendu Ray and a preface from James Watson, sets out a fresh agenda for thinking about future food studies scholarship. Key themes considered include: gender; cooking and consumption; the cultivation of taste and authority; the reinterpretation of culinary traditions; inter/national cuisines; hunger, violence, nation; and Asia as culinary imaginary.