By Chunyan Song
California State University, Chico
Introductory Note to Series
Chunyan Song is my good friend and colleague at California State University, Chico. She emigrated to the United States from China in 1999 to study for a PhD in Sociology, and marry her husband Josh. She eventually ended up at Chico State where we have taught together for many years. The following six essays are her reflections on the 17 years she has spent eating in the United States—everything from a daily Burger King, to gluten free. (Her family is somewhere in-between).
There are six linked essays, which are linked here. Read them in order, or read them one at a time. They are truly a nice look at the American culture with a ethnographic eye. Tony Waters.
I. Introduction: We Are What We Eat
III. Mass Food Production and its Ills
V. Identity–You Are What You Eat
VI. Conclusion–The American Diet
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania. In the past, his main interests have been international development and refugees in Thailand, Tanzania, and California. This reflects a former career in the Peace Corps (Thailand), and refugee camps (Thailand and Tanzania). His books include: Crime and Immigrant Youth (1999), Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan (2001), The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath of the Marketplace (2007), When Killing is a Crime (2007), and Schooling, Bureaucracy, and Childhood: Bureaucratizing the Child (2012). His hobby is trying to learn strange languages–and the mistakes that that implies. Tony is a prolific academic, you can read more of his work at academia.edu.or purchase one (or more!) of his books from Amazon.com.