Cold chains in Hanoi and Bangkok: Changing Systems of Provision and Practice 1

We know that patterns of domestic consumption are situated within broader systems of provision and that home appliances like the fridge freezer bridge between practices of cooking, shopping, and eating, on the one hand, and increasingly global systems of food production, distribution, and diet, on the other hand. In analyzing the uses of fridge freezers in Hanoi and Bangkok as expressions, in microcosm, of complex and evolving processes of urbanization and food provisioning, this article provides new insight into how specific configurations, dependencies, and patterns of consumption take hold and how they vary and change. The analysis of systems and practices in flux in this study has the dual function of showing how household strategies reflect and contribute to more extensive transformations and of demonstrating how these are shaped by ongoing tensions and relations between new and established forms of urban food supply and associated concepts of freshness and safety. The result is a subtle account of the multiple routes through which consumer “needs” evolve.