Eating Together

Accepting the challenge of rethinking connections of food, space and identity within everyday spaces of ';public' eating in Malaysia and Singapore, the authors enter street stalls, hawker centers, markets, cafes, restaurants, ';food streets,' and ';ethnic' neighborhoods to offer a broader picture of the meaning of eating in public places. The book creates a strong sense of the ways different people live, eat, work, and relax together, and traces negotiations and accommodations in these dynamics. The motif of rojak (Malay, meaning ';mixture'), together with Ien Ang's evocative ';together-in-difference,' enables the analysis to move beyond the immediacy of street eating with its moments of exchange and remembering. Ultimately, the book traces the political tensions of ';different' people living together, and the search for home and identity in a world on the move. Each of the chapters designates a different space for exploring these cultures of ';mixedness' and their contradictionswhether these involve ';old' and ';new' forms of sociality, struggles over meanings of place, or frissons of pleasure and risk in eating ';differently.' Simply put, Eating Together is about understanding complex forms of multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore through the mind, tongue, nose, and eyes.