Suchergebnisse

Culinary globalization in Indian cities has resulted in new patterns of food consumption and production. Aside from the increasing presence of global franchises such as Costa Coffee, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, local and foreign entrepreneurs have established restaurants that offer various national cuisines. In Delhi, for example, Japanese-themed restaurants cater to the city's growing appetite for new culinary experiences. So far our knowledge of culinary globalization in Indian cities has focused on consumption: How emerging gastronomic patterns relate to identity formations. The production of cuisines as part of the city's culinary globalization is rarely explored. In this paper, I focus on the role of Filipino 'sushi chefs' as cultural intermediaries who localize Japanese cuisine. This paper discusses their emergent practices of cultural mediation, namely adapting to local taste, peer mentoring and communicative labor. I argue that such practices of cultural mediation point to the social dynamics of cultural production.

Examining emergent appropriations of new media technologies and platforms provides an opportunity to rethink their roles in identity and social formations. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation with Filipino transnationals in Indian cities, I look at the role of social networking site Facebook in their everyday life. Ethnographic data reveal that their practices of sharing achievements and affirming connections on Facebook relate to their need for recognition that is defined by their particular context of migration. The term "mediated recognition" is proposed to account for the ways new and traditional media facilitate recognition by providing a platform for self-presentation and affirmation from social networks. Mediated recognition also highlights how media provide symbolic resources that are harnessed by Filipino transnationals in constituting their identities and social relations. The article demonstrates how mediated recognition can be a framework to analyze a key moment in the process of identity and social formations.

Normative critiques of South-South relations assess the extent to which solidarity and cooperation are achieved among partner countries. However, they tend to overlook the role of inter-ethnic tensions in partnerships and the ways global South actors exercise agency in achieving cooperation. Transnational skilled migration between global South countries is an emerging context where South-South cooperation takes place. Using the case of Filipino skilled workers in Indian cities, this paper aims to ascertain the sort of tensions that characterise South-South relations and the manner in which actors work out cooperative partnerships. The concept of boundary work, a process of defining 'us' and 'them' and relating to others through a set of socio-cultural criteria (ASR 73:37-59, 2008), is deployed to analyse Filipino-Indian interactions in the workplace. Ethnographic data reveal that while ethnic moralities constitute boundaries and tensions between Filipino and Indian workers, they also become bases of affinity. Cooperation is achieved when Filipino and Indian participants engage in personal and mutually beneficial arrangements such as guru-student and patron-client relations. An ethic of reciprocity thus animates South-South cooperation. I conclude with some implications for global South partnerships.

This book provides an interesting insight into issues of migration and diversity in Asia, focusing on different scales, and incorporating everyday experiences through in depth analyses of different case studies. In drawing on a range of academic disciplines, and in utilizing numerous methodological approaches, the chapters within the book also demonstrate a breadth and depth of knowledge, thereby contributing not only to migration literature in the region, but migration literature more broadly, subsequently offering a complex negotiation of the different pathways of migration research and beyond. In focusing on migration as both historical legacy and contemporary issue, the chapters within the book bring new light to migration research, demonstrating the inherent importance of looking back in order to look forwards, and drawing together the global and the local through a process of 'glocalization' (Massey, 1991) which is seldom discussed in such detail; the contributions of this book, then, are multiple, and demonstrate a move forward in migration action research that draws together the state, the people, and everyday experience to investigate issues within migration and diversity in light of contemporary globalization and increased interconnectivity in the world today