This special issue presents a series of papers selected from those presented at a workshop held July 30 – August 1, 2018 at Yale-NUS College and the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. We start from the assumption that changes in Asia Pacific foodways cannot be understood as simply “diffusion from the West.” The collection presents a more complex and nuanced understanding of the globalization of food, which recognizes the continuing power of local, national, and regional food practices grounded in ideas about health, prosperity, and wellbeing. Ideas and practices of what it means to eat “healthy” and “sustainable” are constantly negotiated, translated, and hybridized. Hence, we use the key term “transecting” to indicate work that “cuts across” a whole series of different trends, levels of analysis, and conventional disciplinary boundaries.
From ARI Conference on “Transecting Healthy and Sustainable Food in the Asia Pacific”, 1 August 2018.
