Food and multiculture: A sensory ethnography of East London

摘要

From stomach-churning imaginings of alien meat, gut felt revulsions towards fried chicken, episodes revealing capsicum's addictive intensity, to oceanic tangs of jellied eels, and delightful comforts of Japanese curry sauce, Alex Rhys-Taylor's Food and Multiculture: A Sensory Ethnography of East London is sensorially attuned research that focuses on the ways in which cities are sustained and transformed across time. Rhys-Taylor builds on the growing critiques of ocular-centric ethnographic fieldwork by arguing that such methods fall short of capturing the full range of forces carving social morphologies and cultural textures of cities. Instead, he identifies and examines the sensoria and sensations that are nestled within 21st-century East End London. In doing so, the volume adds to Bloomsbury Sensory Studies series which aims to explore the role of smell, taste, touch, and sound in an assortment of contemporary cultural and geographical contexts.