UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM The Role of Food Culture in Everyday Nationalism The case of Singapore’s Hawker Centres Kelly Ong (11706791) 6/14/2018 Master Thesis in Human Geography 2017 – 2018 Supervisor: Virginie Mamadouh Word Count: 25 000 1 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................................................. 9 2.1 Everyday Nationalism .................................................................................................................................. 9 2.1.1 Meaning of the everyday ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.2 Concept of Sedimentation ................................................................................................................... 12 2.1.3 Concept of Human Agency .................................................................................................................. 12 2.1.4 Concept of Identification and Categorization .................................................................................... 13 2.1.5 Summary: Everyday Nationalism ...................................................................................................... 14 2.2 Food Culture ............................................................................................................................................... 15 2.2.1 Banal Representation of Nations in Food .......................................................................................... 16 2.2.2 Constructing, Reproducing and Challenging Nationalism ............................................................... 17 2.2.3 Summary: Food Culture ...................................................................................................................... 18 2.3 Everyday Places .................................................................................................................................. 19 2.4 Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 20 3. Singapore’s Hawker Centres: Food-Nationalism Axis ................................................................................... 22 3.1 Nationalism: CMIO .................................................................................................................................... 22 3.2 Street Hawking to Hawker Centres .......................................................................................................... 27 3.2.1 Humble beginnings .............................................................................................................................. 27 3.2.2 Modernizing Singapore, Hawker Centres .......................................................................................... 28 3.2.3 Hawker Centres Today ........................................................................................................................ 29 3.3 Hawker Food Culture: Everyday Life and Belonging .............................................................................. 30 3.4 Summary: Food-and-Nationalism Axis ..................................................................................................... 32 4. Research Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 34 4.1 Methodology ................................................................................................................................................ 34 4.2 Research Design: Case Study .................................................................................................................... 35 4.3 Field Data: Hawker Centres ...................................................................................................................... 36 4.4 Survey Data ................................................................................................................................................ 37 4.5 Limitations and external validity .............................................................................................................. 41 4.6 Ethical considerations ................................................................................................................................ 42 4.7 Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 42 5. Hawker Stories ................................................................................................................................................. 43 5.1 Banal representations of hawker food....................................................................................................... 43 5.2 ‘Multiracial’ Hawker Centres .................................................................................................................... 47 5.3 Racial-Language Mixing ............................................................................................................................ 53 5.4 Hawker Food Culture ................................................................................................................................. 55 5.5 Hawking Histories ...................................................................................................................................... 64 3 5.6 Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 70 6. Hawker Centres: Everyday Food-Nationalism Battlegrounds ...................................................................... 71 6.1 Identifications of Singaporeans Today ...................................................................................................... 71 6.2 Frequency of consuming hawker food ....................................................................................................... 72 6.3 What do you associate Hawker Centres with? ......................................................................................... 73 6.4 Everyday Battlegrounds: Hawker Stalls .................................................................................................. 74 6.4.1 ‘Sarabat Stall’ ....................................................................................................................................... 74 6.4.2 ‘Tze Char Stall’..................................................................................................................................... 76 6.4.3 ‘China Stall’ .......................................................................................................................................... 77 6.4.4 ‘Eurasian and Nonya stall’ .................................................................................................................. 78 6.5 Meaning of Hawker Centres: Members of the Nation ............................................................................. 79 6.6 Favourite Hawker Centres ........................................................................................................................ 80 6.7: Hawker Centres: National Icons and Best Representations of Singapore? ........................................... 81 6.8 External perspectives of Hawker Centres and Food ................................................................................ 83 7. Discussion ......................................................................................................................................................... 85 7.1 Vernacular understandings ....................................................................................................................... 85 7.2 Everyday geographies of inclusion and exclusion .................................................................................... 86 8. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 88 Section 8.1 Response to the main research question ..................................................................................... 88 8.1.1 Food Culture and Everyday Nationalism .......................................................................................... 88 8.1.2 The Case of Singapore’s Hawker Centres .......................................................................................... 88 8.1.3 Food, Nationalism, and the Everyday as Processes .......................................................................... 89 Section 8.2 Evaluation of the study and its limitations ................................................................................. 89 8.3 Contribution to existing literature ............................................................................................................ 90 8.3.1 Everyday nationalism ......................................................................................................................... 90 8.3.2 Food Culture ........................................................................................................................................ 91 8.3.3