Food Anxiety in Globalising Vietnam

The edited volume Food Anxiety in Globalising Vietnam looks at the local embeddedness and friction of the global food system materialising in Vietnam. The country finds itself in the middle of complex transformation processes that were fueled by the economic reform programs of the mid-1980s. Following the war-torn experiences of food scarcity and hunger, consumers nowadays have to maneuver in a changing context of food abundance. Against the background of global economic integration, rapid urbanisation, and the modernisation of the agro-food industry as well as due to changing trends in consumption, lifestyle and body ideals, eating turns into a marker of social distinction and disparity. At the same time consumers are confronted with growing ambivalences as regards the symbolic meaning and harmful substances they embody with the food being eaten. Instead of delving into the culinary pleasures and the sociability usually associated with food, the book explicitly focusses on the downside of eating. It puts central the growing anxieties and insecurities emerging around the topic of food on the level of production, distribution and mainly the consumption side. The book brings together an international group of authors from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, area and development studies, and the political sciences. Their empirical contributions address diverse phenomena that in one way or another reflect on the uncertainty regarding food quality and quantity. The growing distanciation between production and consumption e.g. stimulates increasing concerns over food safety and security. Besides this, case studies in the book address body ideals, dieting models, and the negotiation of identities in terms of gender, class and generation-based norms around food. The versatility and connectedness of food makes it a highly relevant topic of research providing insights into broader societal dynamics and transformations: food crosses physical as well as symbolic boundaries and is able to connect the present with the past, the individual with society, and the domestic household with the world economy. As an overall conceptual lens for the different chapters, food anxiety provides the frame for refiguring the interconnections between the eating body, the Self and the world. The books critical discussion of the ambivalences inherent in this kind of boundary crossing of food draws attention to the discontinuities and challenges of a global food system also stretching well beyond Vietnam.