Rongling Ge
Xiamen University, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- Xiamen University Malaysia, Anthropology and Ethnology, Faculty Memberadd
- Fields: Anthropological studies of tourism, landscape and eco-museums.Ethnographic studies of Sani Yi Group and Tunpu people.edit
Food fulfills the most basic need of human beings. The essentialness of food opens it up to many forms of significance, especially the relationship with the sense of place. Tourists are drawn to diverse locations in today's global... more
Food fulfills the most basic need of human beings. The essentialness of food opens it up to many forms of significance, especially the relationship with the sense of place. Tourists are drawn to diverse locations in today's global economic explorations of local food. When food is presented to inexperienced outsiders, however, its regional and socio-cultural associations are usually lost. In this paper, I will discuss the intriguing means which some rural Sani Yi restaurant entrepreneurs in Southwest China have employed to explore their food hospitality business. Through some artful tactics of authorial slippage, local stakeholders have asserted authority over various untraditional food contents, while managing a dynamic, interactive relationship with tourists. I will argue that it is precisely the process of de-contextualization and re-contextualization that gives local restaurant food a flavor of indigenousness in the cosmopolitan world.
Research Interests:
Food fulfills the most basic need of human beings. The essentialness of food opens it up to many forms of significance, especially the relationship with the sense of place. Tourists are drawn to diverse locations in today's global... more
Food fulfills the most basic need of human beings. The essentialness of food opens it up to many forms of significance, especially the relationship with the sense of place. Tourists are drawn to diverse locations in today's global economic explorations of local food. When food is presented to inexperienced outsiders, however, its regional and socio-cultural associations are usually lost. In this paper, I will discuss the intriguing means which some rural Sani Yi restaurant entrepreneurs in Southwest China have employed to explore their food hospitality business. Through some artful tactics of authorial slippage, local stakeholders have asserted authority over various untraditional food contents, while managing a dynamic, interactive relationship with tourists. I will argue that it is precisely the process of de-contextualization and re-contextualization that gives local restaurant food a flavor of indigenousness in the cosmopolitan world.
Research Interests:
The main aim of this article is to reflect on the status of ecomuseums in China. There have been both ecomuseums and discourse about them for many years in China. However, despite the existence of academic literature on ecomuseums and... more
The main aim of this article is to reflect on the status of ecomuseums in China. There have been both ecomuseums and discourse about them for many years in China. However, despite the existence of academic literature on ecomuseums and therefore to the general theory of ecomuseums, from some points of view Chinese ecomuseums do not seem to be aligned with general ecomuseum principles. This article reflects both on how well ecomuseums in China fit the ecomuseum characteristics defined by the theory and, ultimately, on what we can learn from the Chinese experience. Our discussion is developed on the basis of both the existing academic literature and interviews conducted by the authors.