Hawker culture and its infrastructure: Experiences and contestations in everyday life

• Main Authors: KONG, Lily, WONG, Aidan Marc
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Hawkers; food centres; hawker centres; infrastructure; hawker trade; Singapore; Asian Studies; Human Geography; Place and Environment; Urban Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/153; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1152/viewcontent/Kong_HAWKERCULTUREINFRASTRUCTURE_2023_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Hawker foods characterize urban Asia, with similarities and differences across cities that forge both cultural commonalities and distinctions. From the itinerant to the fixed location, from the temporary sites to the purposebuilt, hawker foods are served in informal settings, with varying degrees of tradition and innovation, hygiene and squalidness, local authenticity and globalized influence. In the side-streets of Beijing where local delicacies such as scorpion are served, to the abundant food cart vendors on Bangkok streets, to the warung (small, typically family-owned eateries) in Surabaya, and the carefully planned and designed hawker centres in Singapore, hawker culture is a distinctive