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Available From UC Press
Bitter and Sweet
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.
"Oxfeld is able to tightly integrate detailed, intimate ethnography with a wide body of food studies and anthropological theory to illustrate how everyday people in rural China are finding ways to ‘domesticate’ social and cultural change. While many studies of China have either celebrated or critiqued the changes resulting from unprecedented economic growth, Oxfeld shows growth’s complexity—and through her detailed analysis of foodways, gives us an empirically grounded approach to explore these changes."—Fuji Lozada, Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies, Davidson College
"Bitter and Sweet focuses on a fascinating and important topic, food in modern China, as seen through the lens of one rural community. Oxfeld's portrait of this community and its food practices provides readers with a highly engaging introduction to some of the critical issues China faces today, ranging from food safety to mass migration to profound moral change. The book is thus both intimate and ambitious, in the very best tradition of anthropology."—Charles Stafford, London School of Economics