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“Good to Eat, Good to Think: Changing Food Practices in India”

By Professor Amita Baviskar, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, India

Thursday, April 26, 2012
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
352 Haines Hall

 In the last three decades, although India has witnessed radical shifts in the modes of producing and consuming food, this has stimulated surprisingly little analytical attention.  The changing political economy of food production and consumption and its effects on reshaping social identities and agrarian environments remain remarkably understudied.  This talk outlines the preliminary contours of a project that attempts to analyze some of these shifts through a selective discussion of changing food practices in post-Independence western India.  The talk delineates the widening circuits of food as a commodity form within the home and outside, spanned by the growth of processed foods and practices of 'eating out'.  It outlines the changing signification of 'food as fetish' for different social groups, and considers some potential health and ecological implications arising from the transformation.

 

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsor(s): Center for India and South Asia, Anthropology