SOAS University of London

Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Dr Jakob Klein

  • Teaching
  • Research
  • Expertise
  • Publications

Overview

Jakob Klein
Department of Anthropology and Sociology

MA Tutor

SOAS Food Studies Centre

Chair, SOAS Food Studies Centre

SOAS China Institute

Academic Staff, SOAS China Institute

Name:
Dr Jakob Klein
Email address:
Telephone:
020 7898 4428
Address:
SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Building:
Russell Square: College Buildings
Office No:
564
Academic Support Hours:
Wed 09:00-10:00 & 17:00-18:00 (details below)

Biography

Academic Support Hours, Term 3 

Spring Break
13 April only: 09:00-10:00 & 17:00-18:00

Term 3
Wednesdays
09:00-10:00 & 17:00-18:00

Link:
https://soas-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97880090970?pwd=aS9wTjhmY2lGMmRuTGFkWmpCZ1VGQT09

Meeting ID: 978 8009 0970
Passcode: imvEQBcTk1

Teaching

Programmes Convened
Modules Taught
PhD Students supervised
  • Anna Colquhoun, Food and tourism in Istria: Local specialities and the construction of a region (working title)
  • Chenjia Xu,
  • Elizabeth Carla Smith, Cosmopolitan Creatives: Asian Self-Making and Consumption in London (working title)
  • Hannah Bennett, Golf Course Culture in China: An Exploration of Gender, Class, and Social Stratification (working title)
  • Lu Qiao, Chinese Cosmetic Surgery Tourism in Seoul: Body Politics, Transnationalism and Decentralised Centralism
  • Pascale Pean, The Taste of Home: Identity and Resistance in Haitian-American Food
  • Pauline Harlay, Tea, Taste and Traders: Cultural Mediators and the Reinvention of the Chinese ‘Traditional’ Beverage (working title)
  • Theodore Parker Charles, Crossing Borders; The Evolution of Food Traditions in Post-Ottoman Thrace
  • Wanlin Lu, Food, care and the digital sphere: Community group buying (shequ tuangou) in urban China
  • Xinru Li, Mango TV as Youths’ CCTV - An Ethnography of Youths, Media and Nation
  • Yuqi Wang, Between secularity and religiosity: a Buddhism-oriented town in Mainland China (working title)

Research

Since the late 1990s I have been carrying out research in southern China, with a particular emphasis on the anthropology of food. Previous research concentrated on the city of Guangzhou (Canton), where I explored the transformation of regional cuisine and restaurant/teahouse culture under socialism and postsocialism (Klein 2006, 2007, 2008 (Enduring Socialism)).

I have recently completed research, begun in 2006, which examines the emergence of networks in and discourses on ‘ecological’ foods in Kunming, Yunnan province. The study focuses especially on activism and household food consumption, and charts Kunmingers’ various reactions to a rapidly changing food supply system. It sheds light on contemporary urban Chinese approaches to the countryside, locality, the environment, food safety hazards, health, development, and social differentiation (Klein 2009, 2013 (China Quarterly)). This research contributes to wider debates concerning ‘ethical consumption’ and ‘alternative food networks’, not least in postsocialist contexts (UC Press' Ethical Eating in the Postsocialist and Socialist World). It also ties in with discussions on meat-eating and vegetarian movements in transnational perspective (Klein 2008 (South Asia)).

My current research concerns the transformation of regional cuisines and local speciality foods in China, with a focus on Yunnan Province (Klein 2013 (Food and History)). I am particularly interested in exploring how the trans-regional and transnational movements of foods, tourists, technologies, hygiene regulations, and ideas of heritage are impacting on producers and consumers of Chinese ‘local’ foods.  

Expertise

For help in contacting SOAS academics and advice on services to business and the community, please contact SOAS Enterprise on +44(0)20 7898 4837 or email enterprise@soas.ac.uk.
For all press and media enquiries please call +44 (0)20 7898 4135 or email press@soas.ac.uk

Available for
  • TV
  • Radio
  • Press
  • Briefings
  • Special Study Programmes
  • Short Term Consultancy
  • Long Term Consultancy
Regional Expertise
  • East Asia
Country Expertise
  • China
Languages
  • Swedish

Publications

Articles

Jump to: Articles | Edited Books or Journals | Book Chapters |

Klein, Jakob (2020) 'Ambivalent Regionalism and the Promotion of a New National Staple Food: Reinventing Potatoes in Inner Mongolia and Yunnan'. Global Food History, (6) 2, pp 143-163.

Klein, Jakob (2019) 'Eating potatoes is patriotic: state, market and the common good in contemporary China'. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, (48) 3, pp 340-359.

Klein, Jakob A. (2018) 'Heritagizing Local Cheese in China: Opportunities, Challenges, and Inequalities'. Food and Foodways, (26) 1, pp 63-83.

Staples, James and Klein, Jakob A. (2016) 'Consumer and Consumed'. Ethnos, (82) 2, pp 193-212.

Klein, Jakob A. (2016) 'Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurants and the Changing Meanings of Meat in Urban China'. Ethnos, (82) 2, pp 252-276.

Klein, Jakob A. (2013) 'Everyday approaches to food safety in Kunming'. The China Quarterly, (214), pp 376-393.

Klein, Jakob A. (2013) '“There is no such thing as Dian cuisine!” Food and local identity in urban Southwest China'. Food and History, (11) 1, pp 203-225.

Klein, Jakob A. (2009) 'Creating ethical food consumers? Promoting organic foods in urban Southwest China'. Social Anthropology, (17) 1, pp 74-89.

Klein, Jakob A. (2008) 'Afterword: Comparing Vegetarianisms'. South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies, (31) 1, pp 199-212.

Klein, Jakob A. (2007) 'Redefining Cantonese cuisine in post-Mao Guangzhou'. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, (70) 3, pp 511-537.

Edited Books or Journals

Jump to: Articles | Edited Books or Journals | Book Chapters |

Klein, Jakob A. and Watson, James L., (eds.), (2016) The Handbook of Food and Anthropology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Staples, James and Klein, Jakob A., (eds.), (2016) Ethnos – Volume 82, Issue 2 (2017): Includes the Theme Issue: Consumer and Consumed: Humans and Animals in Globalising Food Systems. London: Taylor & Francis.

Jung, Yuson and Klein, Jakob A. and Caldwell, Melissa L., (eds.), (2014) Ethical Eating in the Postsocialist and Socialist World. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Klein, Jakob A. and Murcott, Anne, (eds.), (2014) Food Consumption in Global Perspective: Essays in the Anthropology of Food in Honour of Jack Goody. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Latham, Kevin and Thompson, Stuart and Klein, Jakob A., (eds.), (2006) Consuming China: approaches to cultural change in contemporary China. London; New York: Routledge.

Book Chapters

Jump to: Articles | Edited Books or Journals | Book Chapters |

Klein, Jakob A. (2020) 'Transformations of Chinese Cuisines'. Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society. London: Routledge, pp 376-394.

Watson, James L. and Klein, Jakob A. (2016) 'Introduction: Anthropology, Food and Modern Life'. In: Klein, Jakob A. and Watson, James L., (eds.), The Handbook of Food and Anthropology. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp 1-27.

Klein, Jakob A. (2015) 'Eating Green: Ecological Food Consumption in Urban China'. In: Kim, Kwang Ok, (ed.), Re-Orienting Cuisine: East Asian Foodways in the Twenty-First Century. New York; Oxford: Berghahn, pp 238-262.

Klein, Jakob A. (2014) 'Connecting with the Countryside? "Alternative" Food Movements with Chinese Characteristics'. In: Jung, Yuson and Klein, Jakob A. and Caldwell, Melissa L., (eds.), Ethical Eating in the Postsocialist and Socialist World. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp 116-143.

Klein, Jakob A. and Jung, Yuson and Caldwell, Melissa L. (2014) 'Introduction: Ethical Eating and (Post)socialist Alternatives'. In: Jung, Yuson and Klein, Jakob A. and Caldwell, Melissa L., (eds.), Ethical Eating in the Postsocialist and Socialist World. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp 1-24.

Klein, Jakob A. (2014) 'Introduction: Cooking, Cuisine and Class and the Anthropology of Food'. Food Consumption in Global Perspective: Essays in the Anthropology of Food in Honour of Jack Goody. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Klein, Jakob A. and Pottier, Johan and West, Harry G. (2012) 'New Directions in the Anthropology of Food'. In: Fardon, Richard and Harris, Olivia and Marchand, Trevor H. J. and Nuttall, Mark and Shore, Cris and Strang, Veronica and Wilson, Richard A., (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, pp 293-302.

Klein, Jakob A. (2009) 'Chinese meals: diversity and change'. In: Meiselman, Herbert L., (ed.), Meals in science and practice: interdisciplinary research and business applications. Cambridge: Woodhead, pp 452-482.

Klein, Jakob A. (2008) '"For eating, it’s Guangzhou": regional culinary traditions and Chinese socialism'. In: West, H. and Raman, P., (eds.), Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation. Oxford; New York: Berghahn.

Klein, Jakob A. (2006) 'Changing Tastes in Guangzhou: Restaurant Writings in the Late 1990s'. In: Latham, K. and Thompson, S. and Klein, J., (eds.), Consuming China. Approaches to Cultural Change in Contemporary China.. London; New York: Routledge, pp 104-120.

 

This list was last generated on Thursday, 5th August 2021, 08:26 Europe/London.