Fuji Lozada's Fieldnotes

Anthropologist at Davidson College

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1994 Harvard University Food Conference Abstract

“Battling Chickens”(dou ji): Kentucky Fried Chicken in the People’s Republic of China and Shanghai Ronghuaji

Eriberto P. Lozada Jr.
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Abstract
(paper given in 1994; I’ve done more fieldwork since then, and have come up with a different interpretation)

The introduction of American fast food restaurants such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) into China and the subsequent technological appropriation by Chinese restaurants illustrates how global political economic processes provide a new medium through which local contestations and self-definitions are performed. This paper, part of a larger collaborative project on changing consumption patterns, focuses on two competing companies that offer chicken: KFC and a Chinese chain called Shanghai Ronghuaji (“Glorious China Chicken”). In conducting ethnographic research of institutions, I focus on KFC as a transnational organization that actively brings into China not only food and management techniques, but also culture: ideas imbedded in its corporate structure, marketing strategies, and the products themselves. Fast food restaurants are largely responsible for introducing changes in public culture, such as the acceptance of queuing and a preoccupation with hygiene. Staff in fast food restaurants are engaged in a constant exhibition of cleaning, mopping, and scrubbing to demonstrate that the food is safe. Fast food restaurants highlight changing cultural patterns – changes that are visibly-contested through the consumption of certain products. A comparison with Shanghai Ronghuaji, a Chinese fast food competitor of KFC, clearly illustrates how Western cultural ideas become transformed and given new meanings.


Eriberto P. Lozada Jr. is Associate Dean of Faculty, Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies, and Director of the Crosland Center for Teaching & Learning. He is a sociocultural anthropologist who has examined contemporary issues in Chinese society ranging from: religion and politics; food, popular culture and globalization; sports and society issues; and the cultural impact of science and technology. more...

Crosland Center for Teaching & Learning
Davidson College
Davidson, NC 28035 USA

office: Little Library 1005
tel. 704-894-2035
erlozada [at] davidson.edu

Make the digital work for you

Essential Tools (mostly free) (Updated, 16 March 2017) Technological literacy (something I really need to define later) is essential to getting things done in today’s mediated world. There are a lot of useful applications out there that will cut back on the tears or punched walls late in the semester. Below are some of the […]

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