The “Ethnic” Restaurant:Migration, Ethnicity, and Food Authenticity in Shanghai

Abstract

Based on fieldwork at Xinjiang restaurants in Shanghai, this paper focuses on the social mechanism of the negotiation of food authenticity. Centring on how factors such as capital, ethnicity, and locality play out in defining and contesting the authenticity of “ethnic cuisine,” this research locates the rising Xinjiang food market in a broader context of migration, globalisation, and consumerism, and analyses an array of competing definitions about authenticity among the restaurant management, employees, and customers at the sites of production, presentation, and consumption. The trajectory of Xinjiang restaurants manifests the reproduction and transformation of cultural representations into potential economic value and unveils how conceptualisations of locality and ethnicity take on particular market‐driven forms. The contested claims over authentic Xinjiang food and the creation of authenticity in restaurants echo local people’s imagination about Xinjiang, ethnic identity politics in China and the development of the market economy in relation to migration.