Food, faith and gender in South Asia : the cultural politics of women's food practices

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Food, faith and gender in South Asia : the cultural politics of women's food practices

edited by Usha Sanyal and Nita Kumar

Bloomsbury Academic, 2020

  • : HB

Available at  / 3 libraries

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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.

Table of Contents

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

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