Hungering for the American dream: Filipino farmworker foodscape in San Joaquin County, California (1939-1965)

The San Joaquin Valley is an agricultural region in Central California that contained one of the largest Filipino American communities in the early 20th century. The Little Manila neighborhood in the city of Stockton in San Joaquin County was a central hub for Filipino migrant farmworkers who served as the backbone of the agricultural industry, and this dispersed community was connected between the urban center to peripheral farm work camps in outlying rural areas. This ethnohistoric study focuses on the Filipino farmworker households and community of San Joaquin County, California (1939-1965) and partially reconstructs their foodscape from oral histories, newspapers, and business directories to study the connections between people, space, and food. This dissertation studies this foodscape to argue that structural racism shaped the everyday lives of Filipinos and required them to navigate the complexities of their lived realities. Food insecurity, the material dimensions that produce hunger, is a lens used to study the impact of structural racism on daily food practices of procurement, preparation, and consumption. Filipino-American experiences are nearly absent in historical archaeology, therefore this ethnohistoric study provides fundamental research in studies of Asian diasporas to the U.S. Assimilation studies pervade the historical archaeology of Asian diasporas to the U.S. but are simplistic in the interpretation of cultural change and can reify problematic binaries of Western and non-Western cultures and material practices. Racial theory is used to argue that race, racism, and racialization enable an understanding of the powered dynamics surrounding food insecurity within racialized landscapes. Practice theories are used to explore how Filipinos navigated the social, economic, and political barriers to equitable food access by utilizing cultural knowledge, recontextualizing food traditions, and relying on social networks. The multiplicity of Filipino-American experiences and their engagement with foraging, fishing, gardening, hunting, and communal feasting are highlighted. In this study, a decolonized archaeological practice of aswang archaeology is proposed and used towards the interpretation of Filipino-American experiences that recenters cultural values in the consideration of Filipino agency and identity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Aben, Kathrina J

Contributors dc:contributor

• Fennell, Christopher C.
• Frankenberg, Susan R.
• Lucero, Lisa J.
• Davis, Jenny L.
• Manalansan, Martin F.

• Filipino American
• Ethnohistory
• Historical Archaeology
• Foodways
• Identity
• Ethnicity
• Race
• Food Insecurity

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Kathrina Aben

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124247

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F124247