Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy

Author:   Grazia Ting Deng
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
ISBN:  

9780691245799


Pages:   288
Publication Date:   14 May 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon it's release. This is a print on demand item which is still yet to be released.

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Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy


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Overview

Why and how local coffee bars in Italy—those distinctively Italian social and cultural spaces—have been increasingly managed by Chinese baristas since the Great Recession of 2008 Italians regard espresso as a quintessentially Italian cultural product—so much so that Italy has applied to add Italian espresso to UNESCO’s official list of intangible heritages of humanity. The coffee bar is a cornerstone of Italian urban life, with city residents sipping espresso at more than 100,000 of these local businesses throughout the country. And yet, despite its nationalist bona fides, espresso in Italy is increasingly prepared by Chinese baristas in Chinese-managed coffee bars. In this book, Grazia Ting Deng explores the paradox of “Chinese espresso”—the fact that this most distinctive Italian social and cultural tradition is being preserved by Chinese immigrants and their racially diverse clientele. Deng investigates the conditions, mechanisms, and implications of the rapid spread of Chinese-owned coffee bars in Italy since the Great Recession of 2008. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic research in Bologna, Deng describes an immigrant group that relies on reciprocal and flexible family labor to make coffee, deploying local knowledge gleaned from longtime residents who have come, sometimes resentfully, to regard this arrangement as a new normal. The existence of Chinese espresso represents new features of postmodern and postcolonial urban life in a pluralistic society where immigrants assume traditional roles even as they are regarded as racial others. The story of Chinese baristas and their patrons, Deng argues, transcends the dominant Eurocentric narrative of immigrant-host relations, complicating our understanding of cultural dynamics and racial formation within the shifting demographic realities of the Global North.

Full Product Details

Author:   Grazia Ting Deng
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
ISBN:  

9780691245799


ISBN 10:   0691245797
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   14 May 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon it's release. This is a print on demand item which is still yet to be released.

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Grazia Ting Deng is a European Commission Marie Curie Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and a former postdoctoral research associate at Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center. She received her PhD in anthropology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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