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Food, Faith and Gender in South Asia: The Cultural Politics of Women's Food Practices

Publisher:
, 2020
ISBN: 9781350137080
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How do women express individual agency when engaging in seemingly prescribed or approved practices such as religious fasting? How are sectarian identities played out in the performance of food piety? What do food practices tell us about how women negotiate changes in family relationships?

This collection offers a variety of distinct perspectives on these questions. Organized thematically, areas explored include the subordination of women, the nature of resistance, boundary making and the construction of identity and community. Methodologically, the essays use imaginative reconstructions of women's experiences, particularly where the only accounts available are written by men. The essays focus on Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, Sri Lankan Buddhist women and South Asians in the diaspora in the US and UK. Pioneering new research into food and gender roles in South Asia, this will be of use to students of food studies, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

An exploration of the self-identities of women as they are created through food practices in South Asia.

Features analysis of eating traditions and practices of Muslim women in South Asia, an under-researched area and religion
The volume covers a geographical and regional diversity of South Asian women's food practices including in urban Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Sri Lanka, the South Asian diaspora and Indonesia
Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the contributors look at food culture through literature, history, anthropology, medicine and religious piety

Introduction: The Politics and Culture of Food: South Asian Women and Their Agency
Nita Kumar, Claremont McKenna College, California, USA and Usha Sanyal, Wingate University, North Carolina, USA
2. Curing the Body and Soul: Health, Food, and Herbal Medicines for Nineteenth-Century South Asian Muslim Women
Laurel Steele, Independent Scholar, USA
3. The Worship of Taste: Rokeya Hossain and the Politics of Ritual Fasting
Parna Sengupta, Stanford University, California, USA
4. Religious Recipes: Culinary Motherlines of Feasts and Fasts in India
Sucharita Sarkar, D.T.S.S. College of Commerce, Mumbai, India
5. Transcendental Transactions: Food Practices among Barelwi Muslims
Sumbul Farah received her Ph.D. from the University of Delhi, India
6. Between Khatm-e Qur'ans and Slametans: Gender and Class in South Asian and Indonesian Interdomestic Rituals
Pnina Werbner is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at Keele University, UK
7. Buddhist Women and Alms-Giving
Pascale Engelmajer, Carroll University, USA
8. Women's Ritually Shared Bodies and Food-Penance in Rural Maharashtra
Deepra Dandekar, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
9. Fasting as a Complex Professional Strategy
Nita Kumar, Claremont McKenna College, California, USA
10. Fasting, Feasting: Social and Religious Food Practices at a Barelwi Girls' Madrasa
Usha Sanyal, Wingate University, USA
11. Praying in the Kitchen: The Tablighi Jama'at and Female Piety
Darakshan Khan International Institute of Islamic Thought in Washington, DC, USA

Index

The essays in this collection provide illuminating insights into issues of women's agency in the areas of the politics and culture of food. They represent a highly significant intervention in the field of South Asian food studies.

Usha Sanyal is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Wingate University, North Carolina, USA.

Nita Kumar is Brown Family Professor of South Asian History at Claremont McKenna College in California, USA.

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