Gender and Food in Transnational East Asias illustrates how the production and consumption of food encapsulates the changes that affect social positions of women and men and their relationships with their families, the state, and their work, as well as shapes their gender, sexual, ethnic, and national identities. The transnational movement of food and people between East Asia and the rest of the world is increasingly visible, forming various forces behind the cultural and political constructions of gender politics among and beyond Asian diasporas. By critically engaging with history, practices, and representation of food as a constructive window to articulate gender dynamics in the East Asian region, this volume approaches food as a symbolic and material site where gender roles and identities are imagined, performed, and negotiated. It argues that a critical engagement with practices and representations of food from gender perspectives can enhance our understanding of the society and culture of transnational East Asias.

Gender in Modern East Asia explores the history of women and gender in China, Korea, and Japan from the seventeenth century to the present. This unique volume treats the three countries separately within each time period while also placing them in global and regional contexts. Its transnational and integrated approach connects the cultural, economic, and social developments in East Asia to what is happening across the wider world. The text focuses specifically on the dynamic histories of sexuality; gender ideology, discourse, and legal construction; marriage and the family; and the gendering of work, society, culture, and power. Important themes and topics woven through the text include Confucianism, writing and language, the role of the state in gender construction, nationalism, sexuality and prostitution, New Women and Modern Girls, feminisms, "comfort" women, and imperialism. Accessibly written and comprehensive, Gender in Modern East Asia is a much-needed contribution to the study of the region.

This groundbreaking volume captures and analyzes the exhilarating and at times disorienting experience when scientists, government officials, educators, and the general public in East Asia tried to come to terms with the introduction of Western biological and medical sciences to the region. The nexus of gender and health is a compelling theme, for this is an area in which private lives and personal characteristics encounter the interventions of public policies. The nine empirically based studies by scholars of history of medicine, sociology, anthropology, and STS (science, technology, and society), spanning Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong from the 1870s to the present, demonstrate just how tightly concerns with gender and health have been woven into the enterprise of modernization and nation-building throughout the long twentieth century. The concepts of “gender” and “health” have become so commonly used that one might overlook that they are actually complicated notions with vexed histories even in their native contexts. Transposing such terminologies into another historical or geographical dimension is fraught with problems, and what makes the East Asian cases in this volume particularly illuminating is that they present concepts of gender and health in motion. The studies show how individuals and societies made sense of modern scientific discourses on diseases, body, sex, and reproduction, redefining existing terms in the process and adopting novel ideas to face new challenges and demands. “Whether reviewing the comparative national histories of birth control, debating early cases of transsexual surgery, or highlighting the resurgence of ‘traditional’ Asian medical commodities, this volume provides accessible and productive studies on these intriguing topics in Asia. Scholars of modern East Asia and indeed anyone concerned with the analysis of gender and health in light of intersecting postcolonial studies will find the book rewarding.” —Rayna Rapp, New York University “A bold and important volume that explores the interweaving of gender, body, and modernity throughout East Asia. With vivid articles on sexuality, reproductive technologies, and sexual identities, the book opens multiple possibilities for how ‘Asia as method’ can shine new light on persistent theoretical questions from biopower to biocitizenship.” —Ruth Rogaski, Vanderbilt University

Foods are changed not only by those who produce and supply them, but also by those who consume them. Analyzing food without considering changes over time and across space is less meaningful than analyzing it in a global context where tastes, lifestyles, and imaginations cross boundaries and blend with each other, challenging the idea of authenticity. A dish that originated in Beijing and is recreated in New York is not necessarily the same, because although authenticity is often claimed, the form, ingredients, or taste may have changed. The contributors of this volume have expanded the discussion of food to include its social and cultural meanings and functions, thereby using it as a way to explain a culture and its changes.

In recent decades, East Asia has become increasingly interconnected through trade, investment, migration, and popular culture at regional and global levels. At the same time, the region has seen renewed national assertiveness and nationalist impulses. The book interrogates these seemingly contradictory developments as they bear on the transformations of the nation and citizenship in East Asia. Conventionally, studies on East Asia juxtapose these developments, focusing on the much-exercised dichotomy of the national and transnational. In contrast, this book suggests a different orientation. First, it moves beyond the simplistic view that demarcates the transnational as "the West". Second, it does not view the national and transnational as distinct or contradictory spheres of influence and analysis, but rather, focuses on the interactions between the two, with a view on how these interactions work to transform the ideals and practices of the "good nation", "good society", and "good citizen". The chapters cover a broad range of empirical research--education, science, immigration, multicultural policy, human rights, gender and youth orientations, art and food flows, politics of values and regional identity--which highlight the ways in which the nation is reconfigured, and the relationship between the citizen and (national) collective is redefined, in relation to transnational dynamics and frameworks. Transnational Trajectories in East Asia provides a new perspective on and original analysis of transnational processes, bringing a fresh understanding to developments of the nation and citizenship in the region. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of transnationalization and globalization; comparative citizenship, migration, and multiculturalism; and Asian politics, society, and regionalism.

How do women express individual agency when engaging in seemingly prescribed or approved practices such as religious fasting? How are sectarian identities played out in the performance of food piety? What do food practices tell us about how women negotiate changes in family relationships? This collection offers a variety of distinct perspectives on these questions. Organized thematically, areas explored include the subordination of women, the nature of resistance, boundary making and the construction of identity and community. Methodologically, the essays use imaginative reconstructions of women's experiences, particularly where the only accounts available are written by men. The essays focus on Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, Sri Lankan Buddhist women and South Asians in the diaspora in the US and UK. Pioneering new research into food and gender roles in South Asia, this will be of use to students of food studies, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Research on women and food security in Southeast Asia has been limited. The collection of chapters in Ensuring a Square Meal: Women and Food Security in Southeast Asia is one of the first attempts at providing a lens into the linkages between women and food security at the household, community, national, and transnational levels. More broadly, the chapters examine women's contribution in households, resource distribution to produce food, and the purchasing power to buy food. In analysing the various facets of food security in relation to gender, the analyses focus on the meanings of 'private' and 'public', and the extent to which the effects of the two spheres spill over into each other. Given women's critical role in food production and provision, the book assesses the structural forces enabling women to access productive resources and, in turn, ensure sustainable strategies for food security; as well as it evaluates how governments might address the constraints women face in this vital role.