Urban Foodways and Communication: Ethnographic Studies in Intangible Cultural Food Heritages Around the World
✍️ Lum, Casey Man KongAn ethnographic study of urban food practices as intangible cultural heritage and communication.
Lum frames foodways not merely as dietary habits but as critical sites where culture, tradition, and history intersect. The text argues that preserving food heritage requires recognizing the impending loss of specific knowledge sets and traditions. By treating food production and sharing as symbolic acts, the book provides tools for analyzing how communities maintain identity in urban environments. This perspective shifts the focus from taste to meaning, offering a structural understanding of how food sustains social bonds and cultural continuity across diverse global cities.
Published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016, this hardcover work sits at the crossroads of cooking history and social science. It addresses cultural and ethnic studies alongside customs and traditions, reflecting a global academic interest in preserving urban food heritages against modernization.
📝 Description: Urban Foodways and Communication: Ethnographic Studies in Intangible Cultural Food Heritages Around the World
💎 Expert review
📖 Why choose it
Why this book is worth reading
Scholars, cultural anthropologists, and serious food historians will gain an essential theoretical framework for analyzing urban culinary practices as communicative and symbolic acts. Casey Man Kong Lum demonstrates how local food production and sharing preserve race, gender, ethnicity, and class identity in rapidly changing global cities. Readers concerned with the preservation of traditional knowledge, skills, and intangible cultural heritage will find value in these ethnographic case studies. The book transforms how we interpret everyday eating habits, encouraging readers to view foodways not merely as dietary sustenance or physical health, but as critical social data vital for maintaining cultural continuity and community bonds.
⭐ Reader reviews
Reader rating
Casey Man Kong Lum's edition offers a rigorous, scholarly contribution to food studies by treating urban food practices as forms of symbolic communication. Its ethnographic approach provides crucial tools for understanding how communities protect threatened food heritages against cultural loss. However, this work is entirely theoretical and analytical; it is explicitly unsuited for readers seeking practical recipes, kitchen technique, or casual culinary travelogues. The publisher's own description remains focused on academic framework, making it clear this volume belongs squarely in scholarly research rather than home kitchens. For those invested in anthropology, cultural studies, and serious culinary history, it serves as an indispensable and deeply insightful text.
❓ Frequently asked questions
📖 Who should read this
Grab this if you are a culinary historian, anthropologist, or student eager to examine food as cultural communication in global cities. If you want quick weeknight dinners, meal-planning tips, or kitchen-tested recipes to cook tonight, you will be deeply disappointed.
