In the article "Breaking Bread with a Spread in a San Francisco County Jail", Cate introduced a kind of special food "spread" which is popular in prison. Because the food offered by prison's canteen are bland, monotonous and small-amount. More importantly, the food served by prison's canteen are invisible sources, limited time, high prices, no relation to personal preferences, mass-produced and contributed collectively. So in a such special community like prison, the inmates certainly invented some food with limited sources to satisfy their belly and make up the restrictions of their regular food. The author also described several specific spread made by different inmates with different flavors. But the same thing of these different spread dishes is that the process of making them is pretty simple. They are usually made by leftover materials and heated by microwave due to the limited sources and restrict regulations in prison. However, compared to the food offered by prison's canteen, spreads made by inmates themselves are not only multiple flavors, visible sources and handcrafted, but also inmates can share them with others and are not restricted by time. So spread has already become the most popular food among the prison inmates and furthermore, it is gradually becoming the symbol of this special community.
In the article "The Cultural Politics of Eating in Shenzhen", O'donnell related the eating habits of Sherzheners to the Chinese political culture, and compared the different diet features between northern of China and Southern of China. The most interesting opinion of this article is the author connected the different eating habits of northern and southern to the different personalities of people who lived in northern and southern. For example, the author mentioned that southerners prefer to eat fish and seafood, and fish and seafood are hard to catch; however, northerners usually eat cattle and sheep, and cattle and sheep are easy to get; so O'donnell thought it is one reason that why northerners are generally honester than southerners.
From these two articles, I realized that there is always a reason that a specific food located in different regions and communities, and meanwhile, these special food and eating habits on the contrary influence the local cultures.
I like your attention to the institutional context that produces prison "spread." It becomes a way for the inmates to interact and to assert their independence and ingenuity under constraints. I don't think that O'Donnell was endorsing those characterizations of northerners and southerners, just relaying the quote from somebody else. Good post on some challenging readings.
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