International Conference on
Food Culture in Asia
16–17 May 2024

—Narratology: singular or multiple? As part of a newer study of socio- cultural history on the daily life, of ordinary people, at the micro level, culinary history tends to adopt simple narratives rather than complex theories. In the case of Taiwanese cuisine, it soon becomes clear that the same set of historical developments can be treated to more than one simple depiction in way of explanation. That is, it can certainly choose to describe as understandable byproducts of the process in documenting waves of migration . Or alternatively, as multiple threads happening at the same time in different even opposite directions, yielding similar phenomena ( breakfast, street foods, spreading growth and development?)

— Longitudinal approach (but how long?) If instead of taking early modern and modern history as familiar thereby convenient conceptual instruments, the contents of Taiwanese eating culture invites scholars to consider including native food habits thus the Austroasian environment as a constant interplayer , over not centuries but tens of thousands of years, what kind of culinary pictures would be allowed to unfold?

— Trans regional Culture vs National Categories: Even though the national discourse conventionally employed can be productive in presenting observers a comprehensible story of how things get from the ways they were to the world we have, still its shortcomings in limiting references and profiling to the relatively recent and dogmatic nationalist agenda is obvious. Now that transnational, transcultural studies are widely accepted, it seems appropriate to drop the sort of Taiwanese culinary analysis following the national line to an open discussion, not due to cultural politics. Awaringly or not.

— Identity ( and memory), necessary yet frivolous? Likewise, identity and memory studies can be useful intellectual instruments, but at the risk of being stale and rigid, at the expense of facing lively ,ongoing, fluid dynamics that people continue to experience and create everyday. As the case that postwar Taiwanese materiality showcased, which may provide a revealing example for many other instances , that food cultures are best to testify, far exceed the fields of high culture and traditional historical studies.