Crafting Everyday Food

"Focused on the making of everyday foods in East Asia from the nineteenth century to the present, Crafting Everyday Food highlights the role of technology in transforming traditional foods into modern and in re-inventing industrialized foods as heritage foods. The seven expert researchers adopt a unique technological perspective to trace the transformation of traditional everyday East Asian food materials - soy sauce, tea, kimchi, and koji -- into modern foods, and the appropriation of new items such as beef and potato into Asian diets. The essays discuss how modern technologies and crafts reconstructed traditional or "authentic" foods and show how global flows of commodities, experts, and consumers, as well as the circulation of knowledge and practices, shaped the East Asian foodscape. The volume weaves together approaches from science and technology studies and historical studies to generate innovative approaches to thinking about tec