XIX Seminarium Migracyjne: "Recognition and Othering: Enacting cosmopolitanism in Vietnamese bistros in Prague"

Through a case study of the spread of Vietnamese bistros in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, this talk examines changes in the forms of food consumption and how different forms can be transformed into cosmopolitan practices. Numbering approximately 65,000, the Vietnamese make up the largest non-European minority in the Czech Republic, and most of them live in Prague. This talk makes use of media texts, interviews with food bloggers and Vietnamese entrepreneurs and participant observation in order to map the relationships between transnational networks, material objects and recognition of migrants by the majority society. The history of markets and bistros reveals a map of mutual relationships between the Czechs and the Vietnamese, from ignorance to hazard, fascination and exploration to celebritisation. In each period of its history, one can distinguish a dominant representation of Vietnamese food as a social practice with specific material representations, competences, meanings and dominant modes of practice. Combining the theory of social practices with the theory of institutional change enables exploration of dynamic processes both outside and within this specific cultural field.

Dr Jakub Grygar is social anthropologist, associate professor of social anthropology at the Charles University in Prague. He lectures on urban anthropology, methodology of qualitative research, politics of identity, and on reflexive anthropology. In his research, he combines an interest in the anthropology of and marginalization with studies of (re)production of social and political order. As a researcher, Jakub Grygar engaged in a study of enacting external EU border at the Polish-Belarusian borderland and in problems of social exclusion of Roma in the Czech Republic. Currently, he studies sociomaterial proximity and everyday multiculturalism among Czech and Vietnamese living in Prague.

Dr Karel Čada is a researcher at of Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. He completed his doctoral studies at the same department (2008 to 2015), which included years 2013-2014 which he spent as a visiting scholar at the Australian National University. He is currently the principal investigator of the project “Dynamics of Poverty and Social Exclusion in the Czech Republic” funded by the Czech Science Foundation. With Dr Jakub Grygar, he received the ERSTE Foundation Fellowship for the project on Vietnamese cuisine and socio-material proximities in the making of cosmopolitan city (2015-2016). Between 2014 and 2015, he was a leader of the research team which mapped Czech socially excluded localities (The Ministry for Labour and Social Affair). He has published in the area of social exclusion, poverty, education inequalities, non-governmental organisations and social and health policies.