Food Values Beyond Nutrition - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 546

about, food as it intersects with meanings and values within a particular social and cul-
tural setting. Each of my small first-hand observations I easily locate in a large body of
regional scholarship that corroborates and elaborates on the themes I seek to highlight.
Thirty years ago Appadurai's (1981) explication of “gastro-politics” in India vividly dem-
onstrated food's dual capacities—to construct intimacy and to sustain distance—and his
observations remain pertinent today. To imbue food quality and usage with moral impli-
cations has ancient roots in South Asia, including some textual sources preceding the
Common Era.6
The first example treats sharing of food: solidarity —the imperatives of hospitality as
redistribution. Such imperatives are not only acted on in the everyday but, also, strongly
affirmed in a plethora of moralizing tales that repeatedly portray greed and selfishness
regarding food as being punished, whereas generosity is amply rewarded. The second
sketch, separation, exemplifies the ways foods index social status and create invidious
distinctions on which people may reflect from various positions in society. Here a semi-
otic of class, health, and modernity emerges from local evaluations and poetics of dif-
ferent grain foods. Third, I present a diffuse rural discourse on ecological and moral
deteriorations: decline examines a critique of flavor or tastelessness in modern times,
associated with transformations in agricultural practice as well as human relationships.
Solidarity
If I think back to my life in Ghatiyali, a North Indian village where I lived as an anthro-
pologist for about 17 consecutive months in 1980-1981, returning for numerous briefer
sojourns over what is now almost three decades, I am certain that the conversation
I have had most often, with the most people, follows a thoroughly predictable pattern.
As I walk past their open courtyard, someone calls out:
O, Ainn-bai, have you eaten?
Yes, I have eaten. [I learn to say this properly in an upbeat and cheerful way, not as if it
were a monotonous convention, but rather a delightful affirmation.]
Which vegetable did you eat today?
I had spinach with tomatoes [or whatever the case may be].
At this juncture there are two alternatives. My interlocutor may say, “Good!” and the
topic is closed; we speak of other matters or I continue on my way. However, far more
often, especially if there is smoke rising from the cooking hearth in their home, the
response is: “Come, eat some more!” This invitation is delivered with genuine fervor,
and although the person offering it doubtless expects it to be declined, they will press me
nonetheless: “Bread is cooking! Come and eat more.”
Uttered at appropriate times of day, “Have you eaten?” often seemed to me to be more
or less a meaningless interrogative greeting equivalent to “How are you?” or “How's it
going?”7 After all (this being a village), neighbors already knew when I ate, and likely even
what vegetables had been purchased that day by the family with whom I resided. From my