Eating Together: Food, Space, and Identity in Malaysia and Singapore - Hardcover

by Jean Duruz (Author), Gaik Cheng Khoo (Author)

Accepting the challenge of rethinking connections of food, space and identity within everyday spaces of "public" eating in Malaysia and Singapore, the authors enter street stalls, hawker centers, markets, cafes, restaurants, "food streets," and "ethnic" neighborhoods to offer a broader picture of the meaning of eating in public places. The book creates a strong sense of the ways different people live, eat, work, and relax together, and traces negotiations and accommodations in these dynamics. The motif of rojak (Malay, meaning "mixture"), together with Ien Ang's evocative "together-in-difference," enables the analysis to move beyond the immediacy of street eating with its moments of exchange and remembering. Ultimately, the book traces the political tensions of "different" people living together, and the search for home and identity in a world on the move. Each of the chapters designates a different space for exploring these cultures of "mixedness" and their contradictions--whether these involve "old" and "new" forms of sociality, struggles over meanings of place, or frissons of pleasure and risk in eating "differently." Simply put, Eating Together is about understanding complex forms of multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore through the mind, tongue, nose, and eyes.

Author Biography

Jean Duruz, PhD, is an adjunct senior research fellow at the Hawke Research Institute of the University of South Australia. Her research has been published in journals such as New Formations; Cultural Studies Review; Emotion, Space and Society; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; Space and Culture; Gastronomica. She has also contributed to various anthologies, such as Food and Foodways in Asia; Everyday Multiculturalism; and Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Recently, she co-edited and contributed to special issues of Continuum and Cultural Studies Review.