Serving Ambiguity: Class and Classification in Thai Food at Home and Abroad

10.6641/PICCFC.11.2009.03

Michael Herzfeld

Chinese and Northeast Asian Cuisines: Local, National, and Global Foodways.

第11屆（2009 / 10 / 15）

4 - 1-4-19

英文

Thai society is marked by a powerful tension between hierarchy and egalitarianism. This creates great ambiguity in a wide variety of social situations. In this paper, I examine the ways in which this tension plays out in current and historical practices in the consumption and presentation of food, and show that both the tourist and the overseas (mostly U.S.) versions of ＂Thai cuisine＂ involve the removal of these ambiguities and of correspondingly complex tastes created through the careful mingling, in more local Thai social settings, of spices designed to orchestrate the complex timing of gustatory experiences. This approach goes beyond the Douglas and Goody models to show that the organization of food is as much a matter of sensory experience as of visible order, and also that formal structures generate ambiguity as much in sensory (here gustatory and olfactory) sensation as in social relationships. Material for this presentation is drawn from the author's fieldwork in Thailand and from casual observations of food habits among Thais and foreigners there and overseas.