Affiliation:
1. University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract
While the literature on ethnic identity takes traditional “adult-centered” socialization theory for granted, this study breaks away from such a perspective, and instead uses ethnographic data on children's food exchange during lunchtime in two predominantly Korean (-American) elementary schools to explore how children use food as a symbolic resource to negotiate group boundaries in peer interaction. Following a discussion of lunchtime seating patterns, this article presents children practicing exchange of “dry food (mass-consumed)” and “wet food (homemade)” that takes three different forms—gift-giving, sharing, and trading—each of which have different relevance for marking, maintaining, and muting ethnic boundaries and other social differences. Taking a child-centered perspective, the study finds that children's ethnic identity development is by no means a universal linear process. Instead, preadolescent children, although constrained by external forces, learn to do layered and situated ethnic identity through using cultural resources in peer interaction.
Subject
Urban Studies,Sociology and Political Science,Anthropology,Language and Linguistics
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