Lily Kong

Dad's Too Busy

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.

Culture, Community and Consumption in Post-Colonial Singapore

Food, Foodways and Foodscapes

Vineeta Sinha

' 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 '

Brenda S. A. Yeoh

This thought-provoking book explores strategies employed by Singapore, a multiracial society, to create a Singapore "nation" with an emphasis on the role of landscape. As such, the authors cast keen eye on religious buildings, public housing, heritage landscapes, and street name changes as tangible methods of nation-building in a postcolonial society. The authors illustrate how "nation" and "national identity" are concepts that are negotiated and disputed by varied social, economic, and political groups—some of which may actively resist powerfuI state-centrist attitudes. Throughout this work, the role of the landscape prevails both as a way to naturalize state ideologies and as a means of providing possibilities for reinterpretation in everyday life.

Constructions of "Nation"

The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore

Peter Hopkins

Elizabeth Olson

This unique collection highlights the importance of landscape, politics and piety to our understandings of religion and place. The geographies of religion have developed rapidly in the last couple of decades and this book provides both a conceptual framing of the key issues and debates involved, and rich illustrations through empirical case studies. The chapters span the discipline of human geography and cover contexts as diverse as veiling in Turkey, religious landscapes in rural Peru, and refugees and faith in South Africa. A number of prominent scholars and emerging researchers examine topical themes in each engaging chapter with significant foci being: religious transnationalism and religious landscapes; gendering of religious identities and contexts; fashion, faith and the body; identity, resistance and belief; immigrant identities, citizenship and spaces of belief; alternative spiritualities and places of retreat and enchantment. Together they make a series of important contributions that illuminate the central role of geography to the meaning and implications of lived religion, public piety and religious embodiment. As such, this collection will be of much interest to researchers and students working on topics relating to religion and place, including human geographers, sociologists, religious studies and religious education scholars.

Landscape, Politics and Piety

Religion and Place

Justin O'Connor

Justin O’Connor and Lily Kong The cultural and creative industries have become increasingly prominent in many policy agendas in recent years. Not only have governments identified the growing consumer potential for cultural/creative industry products in the home market, they have also seen the creative industry agenda as central to the growth of external m- kets. This agenda stresses creativity, innovation, small business growth, and access to global markets – all central to a wider agenda of moving from cheap manufacture towards high value-added products and services. The increasing importance of cultural and creative industries in national and city policy agendas is evident in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Australia, and New Zealand, and in more nascent ways in cities such as Chongqing and Wuhan. Much of the thinking in these cities/ countries has derived from the European and North American policy landscape. Policy debate in Europe and North America has been marked by ambiguities and tensions around the connections between cultural and economic policy which the creative industry agenda posits. These become more marked because the key dr- ers of the creative economy are the larger metropolitan areas, so that cultural and economic policy also then intersect with urban planning, policy and governance.

Asian-European Perspectives

Creative Economies, Creative Cities

This book features eleven essays by geographers, sociologists and other professionals revealing how Singaporeans relate to specific spots in Singapore.

History, Community, and Identity in Singapore

Portraits of Places

Soon Ai Low

Jacqueline Yip

History of a Pioneer Mission School for Girls in Singapore

Convent Chronicles

Peter Dicken

Philip F. Kelly

Kris Olds

Henry Wai-chung Yeung

Most books that analyse the crucial subject of globalisation only look at it from a western perspective. This is the first detailed study to look at globalisation specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. An impressive collection of leading, interdisciplinary scholars explore various dimensions of globalisation and their relationship to development processes in the region.

Contested Territories

Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific

Anjeline de Dios

How can the ‘where’ of creativity help us examine how and why it has become a paradigmatic concept in contemporary economies and societies? Adopting a geographically diverse, theoretically rigorous approach, the Handbook offers a cutting-edge study of creativity as it has emerged in policy, academic, activist, and cultural discourse over the last two decades. To this end, the volume departs from conventional modes of analyzing creativity (by industry, region, or sector) and instead identifies key themes that thread through shifting contexts of the creative in the arts, media, technology, education, governance, and development. By tracing the myriad spatialities of creativity, the chapters map its inherently paradoxical features: reinforcing persistent conditions of inequality even as it opens avenues for imagining and enacting more equitable futures.

Handbook on the Geographies of Creativity

Ching Chia-ho

Chou Tsu-Lung

While global cities have mostly been characterized as sites of intensive and extensive economic activity, the quest for global city status also increasingly rests on the creative production and consumption of culture and the arts. Arts, Culture and the

Lily Kong

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