Book description
Rice Talks explores the importance of cooking and eating in the
everyday social life of Hoi An, a properous market town in central
Vietnam known for its exceptionally elaborate and sophisticated local
cuisine. In a vivid and highly personal account, Nir Avieli takes the
reader from the private setting of the extended family meal into the
public realm of the festive, extraordinary, and unique. He shows how
foodways relate to class relations, gender roles, religious practices,
cosmology, ethnicity, and even local and national politics. This
evocative study departs from conventional anthropological research on
food by stressing the rich meanings, generative capacities, and
potential subversion embedded in foodways and eating.
"In this very engaging narrative Avieli captures the flavor
and richness of everyday lowland Vietnamese life, as well as the
trials and tribulations of attempting to eke out a livelihood, fit
within family hierarchical structures, and correctly pay homage to the
necessary deities and ancestors." -Sarah Turner, McGill University
Nir Avieli is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at Ben Gurion University in Israel.
