From Community To Consumption

Contains papers presented at the XII World Congress of Rural Sociology held in South Korea in 2008. This book provides an international view of the advanced production in rural sociology.

' This fascinating and insightful volume introduces readers to food as a window to the social and cultural history and geography of Singapore. It demonstrates how the food we consume, the ways in which we acquire and prepare it, the company we keep as we cook and eat, and our preferences and practices are all revealing of a larger economic, social, cultural and political world, both historically and in contemporary times. Readers will be captivated by chapters that deal with the intersections of food and ethnicity, gender and class, food hybridity, innovations and creativity, heritage and change, globalization and localization, and more. This is a must-read for anyone interested in Singapore culture and society. Contents:Theorising Contemporary Foodscapes: Conceptual and Empirical Insights from Singapore (Lily Kong and Vineeta Sinha)Taking the Street Out of Street Food (Chua Beng Huat)Singapore''s "Snackscapes" (Adeline Tay)Tasting Memories, Cooking Heritage: A Sensuous Invitation to Remember (Kelvin E Y Low)Placing Pig Farming in Post-Independence Singapore: Community, Development and Landscapes of Rurality (Harvey Neo)The Kopitiam in Singapore: An Evolving Story about Cultural Diversity and Cultural Politics (Lai Ah Eng)The Taste of Retro: Nostalgia, Sensory Landscapes and Cosmopolitanism in Singapore (Jean Duruz)Mapping Singapore''s Culinary Landscape: Is Anyone Cooking? (Vineeta Sinha)Bloggers, Critics and Photographers in the Mediation of Food Consumption (Tan Xiang Ru, Amy)From Sushi in Singapore to Laksa in London: Globalising Foodways and the Production of Economy and Identity (Lily Kong) Readership: General public and a must-read for anyone interested in Singapore culture and society. Key Features:There is currently no single volume that addresses the history and geography of food in Singapore in the post-colonial years; this is the first of its kindThe volume provides a critical analysis of food within a larger economic, social and cultural context, and is not merely a celebratory narrativeIt brings together some of the key scholars on food in SingaporeKeywords:Food;Foodways;Foodscapes;Post-colonial Singapore;Culture;Community;Consumption "This book is a multidisciplinary masterpiece and the intensely researched examination that the foodways and foodscapes of Singapore deserves. Comprehensive in its examination of changing food practices, this volume powerfully connects consumption, production, built environments, home kitchens, hawker centres, and the sensory experience of food. It is a must read for anyone interested in how a multidisciplinary analysis can enliven the study of food in diverse cities." Daniel Bender Canada Research Chair in Global Culture and Director Culinaria Research Centre University of Toronto "In the many reflections for SG50, nothing comes closer to Singapore''s identity than the city-state''s diversified, multi-ethnic and delectable foods. The 10 chapters in this book are a much welcomed multidisciplinary academic intervention of the quintessential Singaporean passion of eating and snacking. This book savours all its foodscapes, foodways and cuisines through its street foods, hawker centres, kopitiams and restaurants. Singapore''s food obsession best undergirds Joseph Nye''s ''soft power'', an expression of ''Eurasian'' cultural fusion, Asian gastronomical delights and cosmopolitan consumption which variously defines Singapore''s national identity, its innovative expressions, its tourist beaconing, its recollection of ''sensory heritage'', its transcultural involvement, and its global-local statement. Sample Singapore''s mouth-watering creativity through its social, cultural, political, historical, and economic taste buds. This is definitely a digestible book worth consuming." Victor R Savage National University of Singapore "Journey through kampungs and kopitiams and find out why food is so important in Singapore culture! An essential read for anyone seeking to understand Singapore food!" Leslie Tay Author, blogger and self-proclaimed gastro-geek http://ieatishootipost.sg "Food, Foodways and Foodscapes is an extraordinary and a rare book that is simultaneously richly descriptive, deeply evocative, and sharply analytical. It provides a welcome and much needed shift in the locus of discussion from the over-written spaces of restaurants and TVs in North Atlantic nations, to the streets, the home, and the web, in a city-state in southeast Asia, which is precisely what makes it theoretically fecund." Krishnendu Ray New York University & President, Association for the Study of Food & Society "This is one of the most accessible and comprehensive book to chart Singapore''s food history … It is an excellent starting point for anyone keen to understand the ways in which Singaporeans think about and enjoy, food." The Sunday Times, Singapore '

Now that consumption has become the defining phenomenon of human life and society, this book addresses the effects of critical life events on consumption motives and the sociological and intergenerational influences on consumers.

Digital media present opportunities for new types of consumption including desiring, buying, collecting, making, and even selling digital virtual goods. To these activities we can add those taking place in virtual communities of consumption, online shops, brand websites, and online auction houses that together amount to a vast new landscape of consumption. Digital virtual consumption motivates concatenated practices which produce meaningful experience for their users as well as market opportunities to profit from them. Consumers create and maintain elaborate wish lists, engaging with simulations of brands on websites and in videogames, coveting items for use in online games and even spending ‘real’ money on these, undertaking entrepreneurial activity in virtual worlds, conjuring nostalgia via online auctions, engaging in playful consumption in other new retail formats, writing reviews of products as part of the consumption experience, engaging in online activist activities, and many other emerging behaviors. Analyses of consumption in the digital virtual realm are however limited. This collection brings together experienced researchers from the fields of consumer research, digital games, and virtual worlds to provide conceptual and empirical work that helps us understand these new and significant consumer activities. Online communities negotiate the ‘correct’ use of goods and offer technical advice, consumers develop new products, individuals create and distribute their own promotional material for their favorite brands, and entrepreneurial consumers marketing and selling their own products online. Here we may see a blurring of consumption and production, or work and leisure activity that requires further thought about what makes it meaningful for individuals. The chapters in this volume take stock of the emergence and likely importance of digital virtual consumption for consumer culture, including a review of both new and existing conceptual and methodological tools as well as a resource of key examples and analyses of practices.

Presenting a contemporary reflection on ethical and sustainable consumption, this insightful Research Handbook offers discussions on the challenges and complexity of living an ethical and sustainable life, and for the researchers who study them. Featuring cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research from authors with unique perspectives and expert insights, this Research Handbook takes a deeper look at the past, present, and future of ethical and sustainable consumption.

Consumption, Jobs and the Environment argues that the present pattern of development, based on everlasting economic growth, is completely unsatisfactory from a welfare point of view. It threatens ecological catastrophe while perpetuating poverty. Roy Carr-Hill and John Lintott propose an alternative policy framework based explicitly on welfare and suggest where cuts in consumption, working hours and ecological risks might be made most usefully.

The Oxford Handbook of Consumption consolidates the most innovative recent work conducted by social scientists in the field of consumption studies and identifies some of the most fruitful lines of inquiry for future research. It begins by embedding marketing in its global history, enmeshed in various political, economic, and social sites. From this embedded perspective, the book branches out to examine the rise of consumer culture theory among consumer researchers and parallel innovative developments in sociology and anthropology, with scholarship analyzing the roles that identity, social networks, organizational dynamics, institutions, market devices, materiality, and cultural meanings play across a wide variety of applications, including, but not limited to, brands and branding, the sharing economy, tastes and preferences, credit and credit scoring, consumer surveillance, race and ethnicity, status, family life, well-being, environmental sustainability, social movements, and social inequality. The volume is unique in the attention it gives to consumer research on inequality and the focus it has on consumer credit scores and consumer behaviors that shape life chances. The volume includes essays by many of the key researchers in the field, some of whom have only recently, if at all, crossed the disciplinary lines that this volume has enabled. The contributors have tried to address several key questions: What motivates consumption and what does it mean to be a consumer? What social, technical, and cultural systems integrate and give character to contemporary consumption? What actors, institutions, and understandings organize and govern consumption? And what are the social uses and effects of consumption?

Revisiting the Politics of Consumption (The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Series