Hawker centres are an unusually good place to study Singapore. They are a microcosm and a lagging manifestation of the various forces and facets of statehood – migration history, state planning, class, consumption patterns, and so on. These forces manifest, whether intentionally or not, in the food we eat and the spaces we eat in or, put simply, in the politics of the various dimensions of hawker culture – space, food, identity, and so on.

In this second book, I take a contemporary dive into the everyday politics of hawker culture, offering a glimpse into how an immigrant population built a food culture under specific material conditions, and how that culture is now uniquely governed and functions – so much so that it has become a marker of national identity and a UNESCO-recognised cultural practice.

The first book looked at the history of hawker culture and how we got here; this book examines its contemporary sociological, economic, anthropological, and political dimensions.