Food Practices and Family Lives in Urban China

This book explores the emergent relationship between food and family in contemporary China through an empirical case study of Guangzhou, a typical city, to understand the texture of everyday life in the new consumerist society.

The primary focus of this book is on the family dynamics of middle-income households in Guangzhou, where everyday food practices, including growing food, shopping, storing, cooking, feeding, and eating, play a pivotal role. The book aims to conduct a comprehensive and integrated analysis of themes such as material and emotional domestic cultures, family relationships, and social connections between the domestic and the public, based on a discussion of family food practices. These topics will not only offer academic readers a full understanding of the most innovative recent critical engagements with urban Chinese families but also provide more general readers with a broader view of food consumption patterns within the scope of domestic and family issues.

This book will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, and human geographers as well as post graduate students who are interested in food studies and Chinese studies.