This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. It examines the socio-material life of three brands of refreshments featured at the 2010 World Expo: the local Chinese water purification company Litree, the Inner-Mongolian dairy manufacturer Yili and the soft-drink multinational Coca-Cola. Whereas international events nowadays play a key role in the intensification of the circulation of information, this article pays attention rather to the carnal dimension of the Expo and to the importance of the sensuous experience of the event in the promotion of these brands. It shows that close attention to the materiality of branding practices and the varieties of a brand's existence can unveil a universe of constant tensions, uncertainties and immanent adjustments, even in the pacified and sanitized ecology of the World Expo. Thirst-quenching soft powerWe were on our way to Shanghai for the World Expo, flying somewhere around over the northern edge of Eurasia. As we were preparing our senses to be overwhelmed by this new gigantic extravaganza on the eastern front of global capitalism, the issue of the in-flight magazine obliged with a feature report on the Expo. The main article focused unsurprisingly on the global significance of the first universal exhibition in China, how it would account as a sign of 'China connecting with the rest of the world', how it would foster new international
Cet article porte sur l’expérience de restaurateurs qui opéraient un établissement dans des pavillons nationaux à l’exposition universelle de Shanghai en 2010. Il met en lumière les spécificités pragmatiques de la restauration dans le cadre d’un événement international exceptionnel, la première exposition universelle en Chine, où l’ensemble des activités des restaurateurs était continuellement soumises à un lourd encadrement restrictif de règles, de contrôles et d’inspections quotidiennes. Dans les cuisines en arrière‑scène de l’utopie cosmopolite made in China , on découvre alors un espace social traversé de tensions, de controverses, de frustrations, d’incertitudes et de négociations serrées qui peuplent le quotidien de ce vaste laboratoire de la mondialisation.
A lot has been written on the cultural and ideological implications of French 'human zoos' and the 'natives' from the French colonies who were displayed in colonial exhibitions. Not much has been said, however, about what and how those 'natives' ate and drank as they were transported to Paris for the international exhibitions. In this article, I would like to draw attention to the politics of food consumption at the Paris colonial expositions of 1889, 1900 and 1931. Shared meals and official banquets were performances of colonial integration, and hygiene and food safety measures in connection with what the 'natives' ate and drank could be interpreted as part of the mission civilisatrice. However, I also want to show that food -exotic food -can also be an unruly object on the pacified space of the international exhibition: a generator of disgust or revulsion that may be a dissonant element within the smooth narratives of French colonialism.At the Paris Expositions universelles of 1889 and 1900 and the colonial exposition of 1931, 'natives' from the French colonies such as Indochina, Senegal, Dahomey and New Caledonia travelled to the French capital in order to bring to life the pavilions, gardens and reconstituted villages featured at these imperial exhibits. The history of these ethnographic exhibitions of colonised people has been well documented and has garnered a great deal of scholarly attention in recent However, a significant part of this body of scholarship on colonial exhibits has, understandably, tended to focus on their cultural aspects in order to unravel their ideological and political implications and to decode their latent if not blatant racist overtones. Conversely, not much has been said about the daily life of these human exhibits, how these 'natives'
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