"Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies" - a talk by Dr Gopal Guru
Karishma Pais
THE ATTIC, TEL: 23746050
At India International Centre Annexe Lecture Room
Along the Spice Routes of the World
Indian 'chicken tikka masala is now the national dish of Great Britain and any day now Mcdonalds in the US will be launching their newest culinary invention 'McAloo Tikki Burger'. Almost everyday there is a new book on Indian cooking and this series will celebrate the vast diversity that is Indian Cuisine and its international influences. We will explore history with 'Cooking of the Maharajas', geography with 'Cooking under the Raj', literature with 'Mistress of Spices', travel with the cooking along the Grand Trunk Road, globalization with 'Bound Together' and medicine with Ayurvedic cooking.
This series of 12 lectures is brought to you by The India International Centre and The Attic. Some lectures will be followed by a dinner relevant to the subject.
tuesday 10th november
India International Centre Annexe
Lecture Room
6.30
pm “Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies” – a talk by
Dr Gopal Guru
Food is not only what one eats, it has a
complex cultural setting in which what is eaten, how and at what times of the
day, where and with whom define, not only a persons culinary habits but as
Pierre Bourdieu says is, “the basis of the
social relationship between different groups and social classes.”
It is important first to differentiate between cooked and uncooked food or ‘kaccha’ and ‘pakka’ food. This suggests the distinction of inequality emerging from deprivation, humiliation and human rights within the cultural hierarchies of the subcontinent. In this sense it is cooked food that provides the defining space for example of the term ‘taste’.
The practice of cooking itself produces different kinds of distinctions, horizontal and vertical within the context of the changing food practices of different caste groups. What are the conditions that sustain these hierarchies? This lecture discusses the relationship between music and food eating rituals on the one hand and the politics of food culture that exist across different social situations. From the point of view of cultural hierarchies it is necessary to explore “the meaning of differences… by looking at their contexts, social and cultural” which leads us to a discussion about the politics of resistance as vitalized through different notions of the recipe.
Finally, we must ask an important moral question, why is it that certain sections of our people who can afford cooked food are unable to enjoy it?
Dr. Gopal Guru is a Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research and teaching interests are Cultural Politics, issues of Social Justice, self-respect and dignity. His publications cover dalit and feminist questions, social and political thought in modern India and moral and social theory. He has been a visiting fellow at Calcutta and Mysore Universities, Sanso PO University Paris, IDS Sussex, UK and Pennsylvania University, USA. His recent Publication is, Humiliation: Claims and Context (ed) OUP, 2009.
