GoldenArchesEast_McDonald\'sinEastAsia

Golden Arches East Golden Arches East McDonald's in East Asia Second Edition Edited by James L. Watson Preface to the First Edition It seems appropriate to begin with a biography of this project. Why fast food? How did five anthropologists find themselves doing ethnographic studies of McDonald's in East Asia? This is not the sort of study most people think of as the proper subject of anthropology. I must confess that I was drawn into this project by circumstances not of my own devising. In 1989 Ruble Watson and I made our annual visit to a village in Hong Kong's New Territories, just south of the old Anglo-Chinese border. We have been doing fieldwork in the New Territories since the late 1960s, concentrating on topics that excite anthropologists (if not always the general reader): lineage organization, inheritance patterns, ancestor worship, geomancy, popular religion. Each year we looked forward to treating our host family, including two godsons, to dim sam (tea snacks) in Yuen Long, a market town that has evolved into a booming city. Soon after our arrival in early January 1989, our friends proposed: "Let's go to the new ......