2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Digital Ethnographic Mapping of Neighborhood Foodscapes in Shanghai and Tokyo
| Project/Area Number |
16K04099
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| Research Institution | Sophia University |
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Principal Investigator |
Farrer James 上智大学, 国際教養学部, 教授 (40317508)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | foodways / food studies / community / public anthropology / social sustainability / neighborhood gastronomy |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The project uses ethnographic fieldwork to document changing neighborhood foodways in Shanghai and Tokyo. This year, we were able to study the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic posed for the restaurant communities in both cities. Because of the travel restrictions associated with the COVID pandemic the digital archive we have created is largely limited to Tokyo. However we have also been able analyze earlier ethnographic data from Shanghai in several publications. We were able to conduct ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with key actors in Tokyo during the pandemic. The public digital ethnography data set for Tokyo reached 70 extended case studies, each comprising several thousand words in Japanese and English.
The focus of the analysis has been the idea of social sustainability and the specific contributions of urban gastronomy to community life. We explain the crises faced by urban gastronomy in Tokyo. In this context we have developed an idea of "sustainable neighborhood gastronomy." This is a normative social science construct developed from this grounded analysis. It allows us to contrast the experience of neighborhood gastronomy in Shanghai with that in Tokyo. While larger numbers of independent restaurants survive in the human-scale foodscapes of Tokyo, in Shanghai we see much more powerful forces of urban renewal, gentrification, corporatization, and massification of urban foodscapes. Independent restaurants in Tokyo face multiple crises, and Shanghai neighborhood foodways have been reorganized along a largely corporate model.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The research was significantly delayed during 2020 because of COVID, but the progress was resumed in 2021, and the project has resulted in several relevant publications. We were unable to return to fieldwork in Shanghai, but were able to continue fieldwork successfully in Tokyo.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
This project was severely impacted by COVID-19 pandemic. This prompted us to apply for a new kaken grant that will investigate how urban restaurants have been able to cope with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ideas developed in this current project will be further explored and developed in this new research project. This includes, in particular, the idea of "sustainable neighborhood gastronomy" as it relates to the pandemic. This year we are wrapping up the project through publications and also through sharing the data set publicly.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Because of COVID pandemic measures there are some leftover final fieldwork activities extending into 2022. The final amount of the research budget will be used to finish the fieldwork that has been planned for the project and to purchase books that will be used for writing up research articles.
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| Remarks |
This webpage is where we publish the results of the digital ethnography project.
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