Bitter and sweet : food, meaning, and modernity in rural China / Ellen Oxfeld.

By:

Oxfeld, Ellen, 1953- [author.]

Material type: Text

TextSeries: California studies in food and culture ; 63.Publisher: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017]Description: 1 online resource (xv, 256 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780520966741
0520966740

Subject(s): Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Bitter and sweet.DDC classification:

338.1/951091734 23

LOC classification:

HD9016.C62 O94 2017

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

The value of food in rural China -- Labor -- Memory -- Exchange -- Morality -- Conviviality.

Summary: "Less than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. For older people in rural areas, food now symbolizes everything from misery and extreme want to relative abundance. Young people, on the other hand, have a different relationship to food. Many young rural Chinese are migrating to rapidly industrializing cities for work, happy to leave behind the backbreaking labor associated with peasant 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, work that describes increasing dislocation and individualism and a lack of moral centeredness. By using food as our lens, we see a more complex picture, one in which connectedness and sense of place continue to play an important role, even in the context of rapid change."--Provided by publisher.

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The value of food in rural China -- Labor -- Memory -- Exchange -- Morality -- Conviviality.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Less than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. For older people in rural areas, food now symbolizes everything from misery and extreme want to relative abundance. Young people, on the other hand, have a different relationship to food. Many young rural Chinese are migrating to rapidly industrializing cities for work, happy to leave behind the backbreaking labor associated with peasant 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, work that describes increasing dislocation and individualism and a lack of moral centeredness. By using food as our lens, we see a more complex picture, one in which connectedness and sense of place continue to play an important role, even in the context of rapid change."--Provided by publisher.