Bitter and Sweet Food, Meaning, and Modernity in Rural China / Ellen Oxfeld.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oxfeld, Ellen, author.

Series:

California studies in food and culture ; 63.

California Studies in Food and Culture ; 63

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food supply--China.

Food supply.

Food consumption--China.

Food consumption.

Rural families--China.

Rural families.

Urbanization--China.

Urbanization.

Agriculture--Economic aspects--China--History--21st century.

Agriculture.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (260 pages) illustrations.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA University of California Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Less than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. As a result, older people in rural areas have experienced in their lifetimes both extreme deprivation and relative abundance of food. Young people, on the other hand, have a different relationship to food. Many young rural Chinese are migrating to rapidly industrializing cities for work, leaving behind backbreaking labor but also a connection to food through agriculture.Bitter and Sweet examines the role of food in one rural Chinese community as it has shaped everyday lives over the course of several tumultuous decades. In her superb ethnographic accounts, Ellen Oxfeld compels us to reexamine some of the dominant frameworks that have permeated recent scholarship on contemporary China and that describe increasing dislocation and individualism and a lack of moral centeredness. By using food as a lens, she shows a more complex picture, where connectedness and sense of place continue to play an important role, even in the context of rapid change.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Note on the Text

1. The Value of Food in Rural China

2. Labor

3. Memory

4. Exchange

5. Morality

6. Conviviality

Conclusion: Stitching the World Together

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

Glossary

References

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

9780520966741

0520966740

OCLC:

962025819