Anthropology 220 The Politics of Food and Sex in India

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1 1 Anthropology 220 The Politics of Food and Sex in India Rutgers University, Fall 2007 Tue/Thurs 2:15-3:35, Location: CDL 109 (Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall), BLD 8840 Instructor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi Tel:? Office: RAB 312, Hours: Tues 11 am-1:30 pm. This seminar examines food in its relation to Indian society by investigating cultural practices of ingestion, production and consumption of food, the moral and humoral quality of food substances, as well as their inscriptions on individual and collective bodies. Whereas Indian cuisines in some variety can be consumed in most areas in the world today, we will look at food in relation to social structure, the formation of community boundaries, taboos, beliefs and ritual, stigma, ethnic and national identity, social mobility, sexuality and morality. The reading materials draw from a wide array of sources including medical anthropology, structuralism, psychoanalysis, religious manuals, Indology, autobiography, cookbooks, movies, and history. In addition to ethnographic description it also includes primary source materials, elements of contemporary public culture, that shed light on the immense communicative power that culinary experiences hold in India, its reflection in colonial discourses, and its effects in the contemporary. Books for Purchase: David Dean Shulman. The Hungry God. Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion All other readings are on electronic reserve. Course Requirements and Grading Criteria Take Home Mid Term Exam (30%), 5-7 pages. Take Home Final Exam (30%), 7-10 pages. Class Participation (30%), Oral Presentation (10%). Attendance in each class is required. Students have to complete all the reading and participate in class discussion. 1. Theme: Introduction (Sept.4./Sept.6) Jack Goody. The high and the low: culinary culture in Asia and Europe, In Cooking, Cuisine, and Class. A Study in Comparative Sociology, 1982, pp (esp ). 2. Theme: Defilement and Remainder, (Sept.11/Sept.13) Abbé J.A Dubois. External Defilements, Chap. III, Part II, and Internal Defilements, Chap. IV, Part II, pp and The Kinds of Food expressly 1

2 2 forbidden to Brahmins, Chap. IX, Part II, pp In Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, 1897 (1999). Charles Malamoud. Remarks on the Brahmanic Concept of the Remainder, In Cooking the World. Ritual and Thought of Ancient India, Chap. 1, pp Audrey Cantlie. The Moral Significance of Food among Assamese Hindus. In Culture and Morality. Festschrift of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, 1981, pp A.K. Ramanujan. Food for Thought: Toward an Anthology of Hindu Food- Images. In The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan, 1999, Vinay Dharwadker (ed.), pp Rec. Brenda Beck. Colour and Heat in South Indian Ritual, In Man, New Series, Vol. 4, No.4, 1969, pp Theme: Old Classifications and Ancient Revolutions (Sept.18/Sept.20) A.L Basham. Food and Drink. In The Wonder that was India, pp , Brian K. Smith and Wendy Doniger, The Vedic Background: Food and Eaters, and The Revaluation of all Values: Violence and Vegetarianism, Part I, sections 1-4, pp. xv-xl; as well as The Laws of Manu, Chap 5, pp In The Laws of Manu, 2001, Penguin Classic. Edwin Bryant. Strategies of Vedic Subversion: The Emergence of Vegetarianism in Post-Vedic India, In A Communion of Subjects. Animals, Religion, Science, & Ethics, 2006, pp Francis Zimmerman, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats, 1983, Chap. V-VII, pp Rec. Brian K. Smith, Eaters, Food, and social Hierarchy in Ancient India: A Dietary Guide to a Revolution of Values. In Journal of the American Academy of Religion. LVIII/2, 1990, pp Theme: Ingesting Mother (Sept.25/Sept.27) Marvin Harris. The Cultural Ecology of India s Sacred Cattle, In Current Anthropology, 1966, Vol. 7, No.1, pp Frederick J Simoons and Deryck O. Lodrick. Background to Understanding the Cattle Situation of India: The Sacred Cow Concept in Hindu Religion and Folk Culture, 1981, In Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, pp Vandana Shiva. Mad Cows and Sacred Cows. In Stolen Harvest. The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Chap. 4, pp D.N. Jha. Resume: The Elusive Holy Cow, In The Myth of the Holy Cow, 2002, Chap. 6, pp Rec. Gyan Pandey. Rallying around the Cow. Sectarian Strife in the Bhojpuri Region, c , In Subaltern Studies II, Writings on South Asian History and Society, Ranajit Guha (ed.), 1983, pp

3 3 5. Theme: Divine Exchange (Oct.2/Oct.4) Paul M Toomey. Mountain of Food, Mountain of Love: Ritual Inversion in the Annakuta Feast at Mount Govardhan. In The Eternal Food. Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists, R.S. Khare (ed.), 1992, pp Lawrence Babb. Foods of the Gods: Puja, In The Divine Hierarchy, Chap. 2, pp (Chap 7, pp ). Jonathan Parry. Death and Digestion: The Symbolism of Food and Eating in North Indian Mortuary Rites, In Man, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1985, pp ; and The Gift, The Indian Gift and the Indian Gift, In Man, New Series, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1986, pp Nur Yalman. On the meaning of Food Offerings in Ceylon, In Social Compass XX, 1972/7, pp Rec. Marcel Mauss. The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, 1950, Norton; Ferro-Luzzi, Gabriella Eichinger. Ritual as Language: The Case of South Asian Food Offerings, In Current Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1977, pp ; Chris Fuller. The Camphor Flame. Popular Hinduism and Society in India. 1992, Chap. 3, Worship, pp Theme: Sacrifice (Oct.9/Oct.11) David Dean Shulman. The Hungry God. Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion Rec. Brian K. Smith and Wendy Doniger. Sacrifice and Substitution: Ritual Mystification and Mythical Demystification. In Numen, 1989, Vol. XXXVI, Fas 2, pp Theme: Documentary Movie, to be announced (Oct.16/Oct.18) Mid term Exam 8. Theme: Community Boundaries (Oct. 23/Oct25) Wendy Doniger O Flaherty. The dismemberment of the cosmic Person, Rig Veda, In Textual Sources For the Study of Hinduism, Wendy Doniger O Flaherty with Daniel Gold, David Haberman, David Shulman (ed.), 1988, pp Louis Dumont. Hierarchy: The Theory of the Varna, In Caste and Democratic Politics in India, 2004, Ghanshyam Shah (ed.), pp McKim Marriott. Caste ranking and food transactions: a matrix analysis. In Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (eds.), 1968, Structure and change in Indian society, pp Adrian C Mayer. Caste and Kinship in Central India. A Village and its Region, Chap. IV, 1960, pp Louis Dumont. Rules concerning contact with food, In Homo Hierarchicus. The Caste system and its Implications, Chap. VI, pp Louis Dumont. The Divine and Caste, In A South Indian Subcaste. Social Organization and Religion of the Pramalai Kallar, 1986, Part III, pp

4 4 Rec. Michael Moffat. An Untouchable Community in South India. Structure and Consensus, 1979, Princeton University Press. David D.F Pocock. Foreword, In Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, 1972 [1902] pp. 5-7, London: Routledge. Mary Douglas Purity and Danger. London: Ark Paperbacks, with special focus on pp Theme: Food and Social Reform (Oct.30/Nov.1) K.N Shrama. Hindu Sects and Food Patterns in North India. In Journal of Social Research, Vol. IV, 1-2, 1961, pp David Hardiman. The coming of the Devi. Adivasi Assertion in Western India, 1995, Chap. 1-3, pp M. N. Srinivas. A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization, In The Far East Quaterly, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1956, pp ; J. F Staal. Sanskrit and Sanskritization, In The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 22, No 3, 1963, pp Rec. David Hardiman. From Custom to Crime: The Politics of Drinking in Colonial South Gujarat. In Subaltern Studies IV. Writings on South Asian History and Society. Ranajit Guha (ed.), 1985, Lucy Carrol. The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform, In Modern Asian Studies, Vol 10, No.3, 1976, pp Theme: Violence and Animals (Nov.6/Nov.8) M.K. Gandhi. An Autobiography. The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 1927, Part I, VI and VII, pp Suchitra Samanta. The Self-Animal and Divine Digestion: Goat Sacrifice to the Goddess Kali in Bengal, In The Journal of Asian Studies, 1994, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp Hugh Urban. Sacrificing White Goats to the Goddess: Tantra and Political Violence in Colonial India, In Tantra. Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion, 2003, Chap. 2, pp David F. Pocock. Morality and non-violence, In Mind, Body and Wealth. A Study of Belief and Practice in an Indian Village, 1973, Appendix I, pp Source Materials: Gopinath Aggarwal. The Auto-biography of a Goat, In Vegetarian or Non Vegetarian. Choose Yourself. Chap. 14, pp Rec. Wendy Doniger. Reflections, In The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee (ed.), 1999, pp Theme: The Celibate Body (Nov.13/Nov.15) 4

5 5 Joseph S Alter. Nervous Masculinity: Consumption and the Production of Embodied Gender in Indian Wrestling, In Everyday Life in South Asia, D.P. Mines and S. Lamb, (eds.), pp Lal, Vinay. Nakedness, Nonviolence, and Brahmacharya: Gandhi s Experiments in Celibate Sexuality. In Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 9, No. 1/2, 2000, pp Suketu Mehta. Satish: The Dal Badlu. In Maximum City. Bombay lost & found, Part 1, Chap. 5, pp Source Materials: --a) Malookchand R. Shah. Then Brahmacharya is not difficult, Chap 4, pp , Chap. 5, pp , Chap. 6, pp b) Swami Sivananda. Practice of Brahmacharya, Chap. I, pp.31-40, III, pp , VI, , and VII, pp Rec. Gandhi, M.K. The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, 1959, Navjivan Press; Diet and Diet Reform, 1949, Navjivan Press; Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence, 1958, Navjivan Press; Obeyesekere, Gananath, The Impact of Ayurvedic Ideas on the Culture and the Individual in Sri Lanka, In Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, 1976, pp Theme: Nation and Diaspora (Nov. 20/Nov.22) Arjun Appadurai. Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. In American Ethnologist, Vol. 8, No.3, 1981, pp ; How to make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India, In Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1988, pp Virinder Kalra. The Political Economy of the Samosa. In South Asia Research, 2004, 24:(1), pp Ashis Nandy. The Changing Popular Culture of Indian Food: Preliminary Notes. In South Asia Research, 2004, 24:(1), pp Aisha Khan, Juthaa in Trinidad: Food, Pollution, and Hierarchy in a Caribbean Diaspora Community. In American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, 1994, No2, Rec. Selection of readings of the proceedings of the Indian Vegetarian Congress (IVC) Parama Roy, Reading Communities and Culinary Communities: The Gastropoetics of the South Asian Diaspora, In Positions 10:2, 2002, pp Theme: Food and Communal Conflict (Nov.27/Nov.29) Owen Berkeley-Hill. Hindu-Muslim Unity. In The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1925, 6: Sudhir Kakar. Victims and Others: I. The Hindus, and Victim and Others: II The Muslim. In Colours of Violence, 1995, pp Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi. The Hyperbolic Vegetarian: Notes on a fragile subject in Gujarat, In Fieldwork Experience and Subjectivity: Theory, Discovery, Anthropological Insights. Abdellah Hammoudi, John Borneman (eds.), 2007, 1-?. Suketu Mehta. Goodbye World. In Maximum City. Bombay lost & found, Chap. 11, pp

6 6 Rec. Joseph Alter. Somatic Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism, In Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, 1994, pp ; Lancy Lobo and Biswaroop Das. Hindus and Muslims After the 2002 Gujarat Riots: Imaging as Binary Opposites, In Communal Violence and Minorities, Gujarat Society in Ferment, Lobo and Das (eds.), 2006, pp ; 14. Theme: Conclusion (Dec. 4/ Dec.6) Final Exam 6